Hunted (9 page)

“I look forward to working with you both,” he said with a meaningful look at Jules before he left.

When he’d gone Mikey rounded on her. “What was that fucking wishy washy display about?
So far I’m not regretting it
. I’m lucky he didn’t do one.”

“If I’d gone over the top he would have taken it to be the load of old flannel it was. I was honest with him and he knew that and respected me for it. It proved we’re not bullshitting him.”

“Oh, alright, I suppose you have a point.” He felt obliged to her now because it was thanks to her that Mark had accepted his offer. “Just don’t go shagging him, alright? I don’t want that going on between my employees.”

“Spoilsport.”

“Jules, I mean it.”

“I won’t. We’re work colleagues only.”

“You’d better remember that.”

“By the way, I’ve bought the unit that’s going to be my tattoo parlour. Work’s already begun. I see you already know,” she sighed.

“I know everything that happens in this city. You’re doing everything by the book?”

“Of course. Don’t look so uptight, this is a fun project for me and I’ve absolutely no urge to make it complicated.”

“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” he said flatly.

“I aim to please Boss. So, what’s next?” she said, clapping her hands together.

“You enjoyed that meeting, didn’t you?”

“It felt good being back in the thick of it, making deals.”

“I do have something in the pipeline, but I need to talk it through with Jez first. Don’t pout, when it’s agreed you’ll be the first to know.”

“Is it big?”

“Yes and dangerous.”

“Ooh, I’ll be looking forward to that.”

“Right. Before that I have an even tougher assignment for you.”

“You’re going to tell me I have to see the headshrinker, aren’t you?”

“Cassandra is expecting you in forty five minutes.”

“Are you going to drive me there?”

Mikey didn’t think he could stand another second in a car with her without doing something he’d instantly regret. “No, I trust you to get there all on your own. You’re a big girl now.”

“I’m flattered you noticed. Sorry,” she added when he scrunched up his forehead in disapproval.

“Have a good long chat with her, yeah?”

“Yes,” she mumbled, plodding to the door.

“I will be checking that you turn up. If you don’t…”

“The consequences will be very bad for me, yes, I know.”

Mikey sat back in his chair after she’d gone, twiddling his pen, breathing in the lingering scent of her. With a grunt of annoyance he threw the pen across the room, dismayed when his expensive Parker pen bounced off a wall and landed on the floor in two pieces, ink leaking from the nib. Sometimes he wished Ryan had finished off that woman nice and quietly in Devon. It would have made his life a hell of a lot simpler.

CHAPTER 11

“Good to see you again Jules,” began Cassandra.

A withering look was her response.

“To be honest I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“Mikey said I had to. If it was my choice you’d never see me again.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to be delighted but I was hoping for a bit more enthusiasm than that,” replied Cassandra, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I thought we made some good progress during our last session.”

“You want a session I’ll give you a real session,” said Jules lasciviously.

“I’m well aware of that but I think we should just stick to talking. How have you been feeling recently?”

“Fine,” shrugged Jules, fidgeting in her seat.

“Am I making you nervous?”

“It would take more than you to make me nervous.”

“On the contrary Jules I think I do make you nervous because I encourage you to talk about your feelings and you don’t like doing that.”

“Who does?”

“Plenty of people do. I don’t even have to speak to some of my clients, they’re just happy for me to sit here and listen.”

“Money for old rope.”

“My job’s not as easy as you think. It requires a delicate touch. No innuendoes please,” she said when Jules grinned.

Jules sighed, folded her left leg on top of her right knee and started to play with the laces of her boots.

“Something’s happened recently, hasn’t it?” said Cassandra, studying her closely.

Jules’s eyes flew up to hers, trying to decide how much she was deducing with her creepy, almost psychic ability to read people.

“Is it to do with Leighton?”

Jules’s foot started to tap all over again. Cassandra decided not to speak, drawing out the silence in an attempt to encourage Jules to fill it, but it didn’t work.

“I’ll take that as a yes. If it wasn’t you would have denied it immediately,” said Cassandra eventually.

But Jules’s silence wasn’t because she didn’t want to talk about it. In fact she was considering it very carefully, but how could she phrase it? She couldn’t tell her the truth. Even though everything was confidential there was no way she could tell her what she’d done. Cassandra was one of the few people who looked at her as though she was a normal person, not a freak. She didn’t want that to change. There was no one to confide in, she had to deal with it alone. The thought was a forlorn one, it made her feel isolated, trapped.

“It’s just so hard for me,” she began, wringing her hands, foot tapping faster.

“Remember what I said, I won’t push you any faster than you’re able to go. You set the pace. Do you want to talk about him?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. Maybe she could find out what she needed to know without revealing everything. “It’s like he’s still here, haunting me. How do I get him out of my head?”

“It’s not a matter of getting him out of your head. He’s a part of your past, a major part and you can’t just erase the memories. What I can do is help you deal with those memories.”

“How?” she said, leaning forward in her seat.

Cassandra’s heart went out to her. She wondered if Jules realised how child-like she looked whenever Leighton was mentioned. The mere thought of him caused her to regress back to childhood. “There are no quick fixes here Jules, it all takes time, which is a great healer.”

Disappointed Jules leaned back in her seat and - to Cassandra’s chagrin - folded her arms across her chest, a classic defensive pose. Cassandra could see she was formulating a reply so she waited for her to talk.

“I’m afraid that…” She sighed and shook her head.

“Go on,” urged Cassandra, thinking it a big step forward for a woman like Jules to admit she was afraid of anything.

“I’m afraid of how much Leighton is linked to my sanity. If I ever did find out he was dead what would it do to me?”

“It would only do to you what you allow it to do. Granted he did some truly terrible things to you but such news would still be a shock. If you did experience grief you shouldn’t feel guilty over it, after all, he was your dad once.”

“So finding out he was dead wouldn’t destroy me?”

“Not if you don’t let it. You’re the boss of you Jules, not him. Always keep that in mind.”

Jules nodded and cracked a genuine smile. This made her feel so much better. Thanks to Cassandra she now knew exactly what she had to do.

Jules descended the cellar steps feeling sick to her stomach. Today she was determined to put Leighton Parker out of his misery. Mikey was already suspicious, it wouldn’t be long before he cottoned on and she would not sacrifice her new life for her old one. Her hand tightened around the brown paper bag she held, the smell of fried onions and chips wafting out of it.

At the bottom of the stairs she paused, giving herself a moment to acclimatise to the smell of despair and sweat, the sound of him moving about, the knowledge that he was close.

In the shadows she saw him scuttle into a corner of the large cage at the back of the room, a hunched figure on its knees, head bent low.

Slowly she approached the cage, footsteps loud on the bare wooden floor. This room had seen a lot of suffering from the girls this creep and his wife had tortured, including herself. She’d spent many long, solitary hours in this cage. It had been the natural place for her to put him after she’d spent years tracking the bastard down. She’d planned to torture him for a bit first, revenge not just for her but for every underage girl he’d hurt and raped. She’d not for one second considered that she might not be able to go through with it when the time came. Before her thirteenth birthday and the day he’d ruined her forever she’d loved him as much as any daughter could love her daddy, even though he wasn’t her real father. Terry Maguire was and he’d sold her to this pervert and his wife knowing exactly who and what they were. Killing that bastard had been no problem for her but then she’d never had a relationship with him.

As she approached the cage Leighton lifted his head, tilting his heavily scarred face to hers. She’d done that to him, sliced his smooth, handsome face open with her knives then stitched it back together with the help of an instruction book from the library when she’d realised she couldn’t bring herself to kill him. Unlike Alice Parker, who had been an arrogant bitch her whole life, Jules had liked Leighton, loved him even. He’d been a good dad to her once, caring, affectionate, which just made his betrayal on her thirteenth birthday all the more difficult for her to cope with. He’d stood by and done nothing, watching as his best friend raped her because he’d paid him a lot of money to rip her virginity from her. She’d bled out badly and it was only the speed with which Leighton had got her to hospital that had saved her life, which had been a surprise. He’d concocted a tale about finding her bleeding in the garden and Jules, because she’d been so afraid of him back then, had supported his story that she’d been attacked by a stranger. She didn’t know if the fact that he’d saved her life was why she found it difficult to kill him or if that was down to the scared little girl who still lived inside her that wouldn’t let her. Today she was determined to overcome her, even if she did fear what his death would mean for her tenuous mental health.

“Here,” she said, tossing the bag of fast food through the bars.

As was the routine she’d instilled in him he didn’t move, eyes fixed on the brown paper bag, not daring to touch it until she’d given her permission, saliva dribbling down his chin as the hunger gnawed at him.

Today she decided not to draw it out, she just wanted it over with so she nodded her permission and he tore into the bag.

Jules slumped to the floor before the cage to watch him eat. His teeth had once been perfectly even and white, but now they were yellow and loose with his poor diet and bad health and he struggled with the meat of the burger, which was a little tough.

When he was replete, every morsel of food gone, he released a sigh of pleasure and sank back onto the floor to down the bottle of water that was in the bag too. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at her with a gentle smile. “How’s my lovely girl?”

“Fine,” was all she replied, watching him carefully. It should start soon.

“Ashley,” smiled Rachel when he turned up on her doorstep. “Is this an official or an unofficial visit?”

“Official I’m afraid. Can I come in?”

“Course you can. Brew?” she asked as he followed her through to the kitchen.

“Thank you, coffee please.”

“You look tired, you’ve been working too hard,” she said as she filled the kettle.

“Work’s been busy lately and it’s about to get even busier.”

Rachel set the kettle to boil then turned to face him. “You’ve identified the body, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I’m afraid it is Daniel Tebbs. He disappeared six years ago, which tallies with when the annex was built.”

Rachel thought of what Ryan had told her Chris Marsh had said and swallowed hard. “How?”

“He was shot through the head. There was also some mutilation done to the body.”

“What sort of mutilation?”

“I can’t tell you that Rachel. We want to keep the details quiet so we can sort the real killer from the nutcases.”

“I see. Any leads?”

“Nothing,” he sighed. “Daniel’s family are going mad, they’re threatening to sue. They said we didn’t take his disappearance seriously enough.”

Rachel thought they had a point. “Did you recover the bullet from the body?”

“No, it had been removed.” He gave a grim laugh and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“You can trust me.”

He nodded. “My worry is that if Daniel’s dead, what if all the other missing men are?”

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

“We’re still searching your property, just to make sure there aren’t any other bodies up there. So far we’ve turned up nothing. If we don’t you’ll be able to move in in the next few days.”

“That would be great. Leah’s not taking all this very well.”

“Giving you a hard time, is she?”

“She’s like a teenager already. I shudder to think what she’ll be like when she’s sixteen.”

“I’m sure you can handle her,” he smiled, although it didn’t reach his eyes.

“So what are you going to do next?”

“I wish I had a clue,” he said sheepishly, stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets.

“There’s still no evidence this is the work of a serial killer?”

“It takes more than one body but it does tell us there’s a killer in our midst.”

“I hope you catch him soon.”

“So do I otherwise my career’s down the pan.”

“That bad is it?”

He nodded miserably. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you’re going to get your house back soon so you can make the preparations.”

“I appreciate that Ashley.” He looked so despondent she gave him a hug. “You’re a good officer, you’ll find them.”

“I hope so,” he said, hanging onto her.

The slam of the front door caused him to jump like a scalded cat. He released Rachel and backed away, maintaining a respectable distance between them.

“Hello Ashley,” said Ryan coolly. “To what do we owe this honour?”

“I’ll let Rachel tell you. I’ve got to get back to work. See you later.”

“Bye,” Rachel called as he hurried to the door.

Ryan looked from him to her. “Well?”

“The body under the annex was Daniel Tebbs.”

“Just as I suspected.”

“We’ll also be able to finally move into our house in a few days, once they’ve confirmed there aren’t any more bodies on our land. Ashley doesn’t think there will be.”

“Still convinced it’s a one-off?”

“He’s more open to the possibility of a serial killer. After dismissing Daniel’s disappearance he’s not willing to ignore any possibility now. The Tebbs family are threatening to sue.”

“And so they should.”

“Don’t say that, Ashley’s really upset.”

“Good. He was one of the fools who decided to ignore his disappearance in the first place.”

“He’s certainly paying for it now. What are you doing back so early anyway?”

He pulled her against him and kissed her hard.

“I see,” she smiled up at him. “Are you going to shave the beard off?”

“I like it.”

“I don’t know why. It’s a crime to hide that face.”

“I fancy a change.”

“I fancy you.”

He grinned and pulled her tighter against him.

“Without the beard,” she added.

“What’s so bad about it?”

“It scratches when you kiss me and food gets caught in it.”

“Don’t you think it makes me look distinguished?” he said, running a hand over it. Her answering snigger narrowed his eyes. “I take it that’s a no?”

“It is.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“No I won’t.”