‘I want him found, now. And fast. DCI Foster could be in danger,’ said Marsh. ‘And get Simon Douglas-Brown out of his bloody cell and stick him in an interview room . . .’
‘Of course, you realise all this is inadmissible,’ said Simon, twenty minutes later, when Marsh had outlined Linda’s confession. ‘My solicitor has informed me that you were faxed a statement from Linda’s physician to show that, basically, anything that comes out of her mouth is inadmissible. She’s gaga; always has been. As for David, he changed his plans without telling me; no crime in that. They must have moved the stag party.’
Simon rose from his seat in the interview room. ‘Now, I will be calling Assistant Commissioner Oakley later, where I’ll be recommending that . . .’
‘Shut your mouth, Simon,’ said Marsh.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Simon.
‘Shut your mouth and sit down. You are still detained under caution and I’m not finished with you. Sit. Down.’
Simon looked shocked, and slowly sank back into his chair.
‘Now. An arrest warrant is out for your son, who we believe is responsible for the deaths of five women, including your own daughter.’
Simon was silent.
‘We’ve also discovered that the phone Andrea lost and claimed on insurance was in your name. Andrea lied that it had been stolen and we have the handset as evidence.’ Marsh opened an envelope and dropped the plastic-wrapped cracked handset on the table. ‘So, I see it like this. At best, you’ll be done for insurance fraud. And you know how hard the government has lobbied for this. It could mean prison time, and as well as you being a very unpopular boy in prison, it will no doubt open the floodgates to all kinds of people with grievances towards you. Journalists, politicians. Add into the mix that your own son killed your daughter, and you knowingly told him to skip the country whilst stitching up your other daughter . . .’
‘All right! ALL RIGHT!’ shouted Simon. ‘All right. I’ll tell you . . .’
‘Simon Douglas-Brown, Baron of Hunstanton, I’m arresting you on charges of perverting the course of justice and concealing criminal activity. We also suspect that you used your position of power to influence the outcome of one or more Crown Prosecution trials. Okay. Start talking, and fast,’ said Marsh.
80
David had quickly cleaned himself up in the bathroom, packing his nose with tissue to stop the bleeding. He then grabbed his bag, passport and money, and carried Erika downstairs over his shoulder. He was surprised how heavy she was for someone so scrawny. They emerged into the underground garage, and the lights blinked on. He approached the boot of the car. Inside was the prostitute with the long dark hair he had picked up at Paddington Station.
They’d driven round for a while, he and the prostitute; the girl attempting to make him hard, her hand inside his trousers, but that hadn’t interested him. It had been a busy night, and all his usual places, the parks and lidos, had too much action going on. People walking about; police cars moving slowly past.
He had been forced to bring her home. She had been so excited when he’d driven up to his parents’ house. Checking her face in the small mirror above the passenger seat. As if she hadn’t been hired to fuck; she seemed to think she might be introduced to his parents. He wondered if she’d watched Pretty Woman too many times. He’d laughed when he thought this, and she’d joined in.
Stupid bitch.
Once they were in the underground garage, and they were out of the car, he’d slammed her face into the concrete wall. She never regained consciousness. This had made the moment when she died disappointing.
Still, he now had the ultimate prize. DCI Foster.
When he opened the boot of his car, the dead girl lay on her back. He had checked on her three times since he had strangled her to death, and each time it fascinated him to see how she’d changed: through the rigid wide-eyed stare of rigor mortis, to the tinge of purple on her skin where she looked as if she were sleeping, and now, her sharp cheekbones buried beneath swollen, bloated flesh, making her bruises bloom dark like ink stains. He laughed at her swollen face; she would hate to see how fat she was getting. He heaved Erika’s limp body in beside her, closed the boot, and locked it.
It was still early in the morning when he pulled out of the underground garage and into the cul-de-sac, but he drove carefully for the couple of miles to the M4 junction. Once on the motorway, he was able to join the rush-hour traffic, whipping round the M25 motorway, orbiting the outskirts of London.
Erika felt herself regain consciousness, but the darkness was absolute. Her face was pressed against something rough. One arm was pinned under her at an angle. She brought the other arm up to touch her face, but her hand hit a solid mass a few inches above her head. She shifted, feeling the pain shoot through her face. She tasted blood and swallowed painfully. There was a rumbling, swaying motion underneath her. She felt around her the curved sides of the confined space, the metal above her, the inside mechanism of the lock, and realised she was in the boot of a car. Then a foul, pungent smell hit her. It had a tang of rot, and she heaved, barely able to catch her breath when she was forced to suck the rancid smell back into her lungs in the confined space. The car sped up and took a turn, the road bumping unevenly underneath. The gravitational force pushed Erika across to the edge of the boot, and something heavy rolled against her.
It was then that she knew she was in the back of the car with a body.
81
Information was coming through to the incident room fast, and Moss and Peterson were realising with horror that DCI Foster could be the next victim. The Douglas-Brown house had been searched, and was empty. Erika’s car had been found parked two streets away and the number plate for David’s car had been photographed leaving the west section of London’s congestion charge zone.
‘Simon Douglas-Brown’s secretary bought David a one-way ticket on the Eurostar to Paris,’ said Crane, coming off the phone.
‘So, not Prague,’ said Moss.
‘Shit. What about DCI Foster?’ asked Peterson.
‘She’s not in the house. She’s not in her car. She must be in his,’ said Moss. ‘Crane, how fast can we scramble a helicopter?’
‘When Chief Superintendent Marsh gives the order, four minutes,’ said Crane.
‘Okay, I’m calling Marsh,’ said Moss.
82
The junction sign for Ebbsfleet International Train Station loomed above, and David indicated and took the exit off the M25, slowing as he hit the ramp, which curved round and changed to a single lane carriageway. The A2 was busy with cars, but they peeled off at the turning for the Bluewater Shopping Centre, its futuristic glass spires emerging from where it sat deep in an old chalk quarry. David drove on, speeding past empty industrial wasteland, grass, and the occasional tree dotting the scrubland. He slowed when he saw the lay-by up ahead, and then turned off. He came to a halt, and had to get out of the car to unhook a chain which hung across a small dirt track.
Erika had struggled to control the fear climbing her throat – the fear of being boxed in with a dead girl, and of what would happen when they reached their destination. She had forced herself to check for signs of life, and during this had discovered the body was that of a girl with long hair, whose life had long since left her. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she could make out two tiny pinpricks of light next to the inside of the locking mechanism. She had run her hands over it, slowly at first, feeling its sharp greasy contours for a weakness, a way of prising it open. The car had lurched and the body had rolled against her again, and for a brief moment she’d panicked, clawing at the lock and breaking two of her fingernails below the quick. The pain had pulled her away from the brink of losing it, and she’d forced herself to think. To remain calm.
To survive.
She’d found a small hole in the carpeting underneath her, used to pull out the layer of carpet where underneath were kept the tools and spare wheel. She’d had to lie to one side, on top of the d
ead girl, to get the carpet up far enough to reach under, where she’d found a wrench. She had it now, in her grip. It was cold, but her hands were sweating. She felt the car come to a stop and braced herself. A door opened, and weight shifted. Moments later, the car lurched as David got back in. She heard a door close again, and then the car set off slowly, lurching from side to side, its suspension creaking. She felt the body beside her move, and the weight shifted so that it rolled onto her, the hair on its scalp pressing against the back of her head. She closed her eyes and tried to think; to focus on what she would do.
David drove slowly along the bumpy track, which opened out to a vast, disused chalk quarry. In the centre was a deep pit filled with water. He came to a stop twenty yards from the edge, and killed the engine. He got out of the car and walked to the edge. The quarry walls were smooth. Tufts of grass grew in patches, and a small tree emerged from a break in the rock. Fifty feet below, the water was still and the weak morning sunlight bounced off dim blurry patches where the water was still frozen. To the left, the Bluewater Shopping Centre sat low on the horizon, and a couple of miles in the opposite direction, a high-speed train left Ebbsfleet International, streaking past silently on its way to the Eurotunnel crossing to Paris.
David checked his watch; there was just enough time. He removed his rucksack and placed it on the ground a few feet from the car. He opened the back passenger door and made sure the child lock was activated. He then grabbed the heavy steering wheel lock from the passenger footwell and moved round to the boot of the car. He listened for a moment, braced himself with the steering wheel lock, and then opened the boot.
The stench was worse in the clean air of the quarry, and the putrid smell rose up, hitting him in the face. Both bodies were still. He leant in to pull Erika out, but her arm shot out and she caught him on the side of his head with a wrench.
He staggered back for a moment, seeing stars, but as she started to climb from the boot, he swung the steering lock round and hit her in the side of her left knee. She collapsed onto the ground, groaning. He did the same to her right knee. She cried out again. David grabbed her and dragged her round to the rear passenger seat.
‘Don’t fight me,’ he said.
‘David. It doesn’t have to end like this,’ gasped Erika through the pain, seeing the vast expanse of water stretching out below them. She couldn’t move her legs, and one of her arms was dead from being pinned under her in the car. Her head was still woozy where she had been hit, and she was fighting to think. Her head struck the doorframe as David hauled her body into the car. The door slammed and she looked around, seeing she was in the back, sitting behind the driver’s seat. She caught sight of her face in the mirror. Her blonde hair was slick with blood on one side, and plastered against her scalp. One eye was so blackened and swollen that it was closed. She tried the door beside her, but it wouldn’t open. She leaned across, groaning in agony, and tried the other passenger door. It, too, wouldn’t open.
The front passenger door opened, sucking out the air, which was replaced by the stench of death. David was carrying the body of the dead girl, looking more horrific than Erika had imagined. The girl had long dark hair, but her face was swollen with two black eyes and multiple cuts. Strands of hair had been pulled out from the side of her head. Erika looked down and saw strands of the girl’s hair stuck to her own jacket.
David shoved the girl into the front passenger seat, and her head flopped to one side. Erika could see that her eyes were a pearly blur, and her tongue had swollen, oozing from her mouth like a huge, purple-black slug.
‘David, listen. I don’t know what you’re planning, but you won’t get away with it . . . If you surrender now, I can . . .’
‘You really are an arrogant bitch, aren’t you?’ he said, peering through the seats. ‘Here you are with the shit beaten out of you, stuck inside a car in the middle of nowhere, and you think I’m going to surrender to you.’
‘David!’
He leant over and punched her hard in the face. Her head jerked back and bounced off the window. Blackness flooded her vision for a moment. When she came to, she felt a seatbelt being pulled around her and fastened with a click. The door beside her slammed shut. David peered through the seats, taking off the handbrake. She felt the wheels jerk free.
‘It looks like it’s going to freeze again tonight,’ he said. The driver’s door slammed, and seconds later the car began to roll forward, towards the edge of the quarry.
The car quickly picked up speed. David broke into a run, still pushing. He pulled back a few metres from the edge, and the car surged forward and vanished over the edge.
Erika felt the wheels leave the edge of the quarry. The horizon seemed to fly upwards, and was replaced by bright blue, hurtling towards the windscreen. David had strapped both her and the dead girl in, but the whiplash from the impact was excruciating nevertheless. The car was submerged in bright blue for a moment, and then righted itself and broke the surface, the interior blazing with natural light. Erika searched frantically for the seat belt clasp, but it wouldn’t open. The windows had been left open a few inches, and ice-cold water was surging inside, rapidly filling the car. Erika had expected to have time to react; she tried to open the door but the child lock was still activated. Water flooded in the windows, and within seconds the freezing water rose to her chest. Panicking, Erika grabbed as deep a breath as she could, and the roaring sound from above ceased as she was submerged. The car began to sink at a terrifying rate, down, deeper and darker. The weight of the engine sent them into a head-on collision with the bottom of the quarry.
The police helicopter reached the edge of the quarry as, far below, they saw David’s car roll over the edge and hit the water. Moss and Peterson were in the helicopter with a police pilot. They had an open radio link to the incident room in Lewisham Row, and backup vehicles and an ambulance were on their way.
‘Suspect is running,’ said Moss, training the gyroscopic camera fixed to the bottom of the helicopter, beaming the images back to the incident room. ‘Put police on alert. Suspect is running from the scene, north, towards Ebbsfleet Station.’
‘Shit, what if she’s in that car? How far are the backup vehicles?’ asked Peterson.
‘Backup vehicles are four or five minutes away,’ said Marsh, over the radio.
‘DCI Foster must be in that car. Land, land, land!’ yelled Moss into the radio. The helicopter descended fast. The white chalk of the quarry came rushing up towards them, and the helicopter had barely set down before Moss and Peterson jumped out, ducking under the spinning blades, holding their hands up against the flying dust. The seconds were racing past, and below, bubbles were flooding up to the surface and rippling out into a large circle in the water.
‘You are authorised to shoot, but we want him brought in alive,’ they heard Marsh say on the radio.
Peterson made for an access slope at the side of quarry, running flat out to reach it. Moss followed, shouting into her radio.
‘We believe there is an officer in the car which went over the side and into the water. I repeat, an officer is trapped in the car underwater.’
‘Three minutes away,’ came a voice.
‘Shit, we haven’t got three minutes!’ cried Moss.
The helicopter hovered above, flew over the lip of the quarry and sank down until it was just above the spreading bubbles on the surface. Peterson was now at the water’s edge, and without hesitation, ripped off his jacket and gun and waded into the water, swimming out, arms arcing from side to side. He reached the spot where the car had submerged, and dived under.
‘Can you report? Suspect is on the run, do we have backup at Ebbsfleet Station? I repeat, do we have backup? If he gets on the fucking train . . .’ came Marsh’s voice, over the radio.
‘Backup on its way, and the station is being shut down,’ answered a voice.
‘Moss, report. Our visual shows Peterson is in the water.’
‘Yes, sir, DI Peterson is under the wat
er. I repeat, DI Peterson is under the water,’ said Moss, into her radio. She was now standing at the water’s edge.
‘Jesus!’ said Marsh.
There was radio silence as the helicopter roared and hovered, pressing an oval shape into the water. Seconds ticked by.
‘Come on, please, come on!’ said Moss. She was about to wade in after Peterson, when he broke the surface, holding Erika’s limp body.
The quarry above was suddenly filled with the screaming sirens of an ambulance, fire engine, and police support cars. Above the water, a safety line came down from the helicopter, and Peterson managed to hook it over both himself and Erika. He gave the thumbs up and they were lifted out of the water, their feet skimming above as they were half-carried, half-dragged over towards Moss at the edge.
‘DCI looks badly injured, and she appears unconscious,’ said Moss into her radio. ‘There’s an access road to the left side where you’ve come in, we’re down by the water. I repeat, DCI Foster looks unresponsive!’ cried Moss.
Peterson and Erika reached the edge of the water, and the helicopter set them down. Four paramedics raced down the slope to the water’s edge. They unhooked Erika from the safety line and gently laid her on the ground.
Peterson was drenched and shivering, and a foil blanket was quickly put over him. The paramedics started to work on Erika. There were a tense few moments, and then Erika gasped, coughing up water.
‘It’s okay, on your side,’ said the paramedic, tipping her into the recovery position. She coughed, and more water shot out of her mouth. She gasped, pulling clean, cold air into her lungs.