A Tapping at My Door: A Gripping Serial Killer Thriller (The DS Nathan Cody Series) (41 page)

‘Go,’ she tells him.

And so he does. He travels with Webley to the hospital, holding her hand and telling her it will be okay, and saying lots of things that he won’t even remember later, because he knows she needs a friendly, comforting voice at the moment, and that’s all he has to offer now to the woman who once believed she would become his wife.

And even as he tells her to be strong, he feels his own strength waning. He can’t hold back the tears, and he can’t keep his voice from breaking, and he can’t stop himself wishing that Webley hadn’t come back for him on that roof. He had already made his pact concerning who should live and who should die, and she had to go and mess it all up.

At the hospital the intimacy is ended abruptly. She is whisked out of his hands. Wheeled off to an operating theatre by a professional-looking team who have only the welfare of the patient on their minds. Cody is quizzed briefly but efficiently. The medics extract only the information they need about the background to Webley’s predicament. And when they have drained him of his data and he informs them that he is not family, he seems to be relegated in their estimation of his further usefulness. He becomes a mere bystander, peripheral to the whole situation.

He paces. He sits. He drinks coffee. Occasionally he asks for news. Time drags.

At some point he glances up and sees familiar faces at the desk. Webley’s parents. Accompanying them is a tall, handsome man in an expensive suit. Parker, presumably.

Cody decides it’s best to make himself scarce. He’s not sure how any of them will feel about him being there, and he doesn’t want to make a scene. Webley wouldn’t wish that.

He sneaks off. Finds a cafeteria. Drinks more coffee.

He returns to the ward when he feels it might be safe to do so. Standing at the desk, he looks along the corridor. There is no sign of Webley’s parents, but Parker is there, alone on a chair. He has his head in his hands, and he is shaking slightly. Cody thinks he might be crying, but he’s not sure. He wants to go over to him. Try to console him, or at least talk to him. But again he’s not sure that’s a good idea.

He turns to the woman behind the desk. ‘I, er, I came in with Megan Webley earlier.’

‘Oh. Yes.’

‘I . . . I was just wondering if you had any more information for me. About her condition.’

The woman looks to her left, as another woman strolls over. This one is wearing hospital scrubs.

‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I’ve just been talking to the family members. And you are?’

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Cody. Megan Webley is my colleague. I brought her in.’

She nods. Cody steels himself. There is news. If this doctor has been talking to the family, there is news.

His eyes flicker again to Parker. Look at him, he thinks. This can’t be good. This must be the worst news possible.

Says the doctor, ‘She’s a strong girl. Looks like she’ll be making a few more arrests yet.’

Cody feels tension flood out of him. He almost collapses on the spot.

‘She’s okay?’

‘We think so. The crossbow bolt didn’t hit her heart or any major blood vessels. It nicked her lung, but we’ve managed to patch that up. Right now she just needs rest. She can be seen later, but really we want to keep that to a minimum. Close family members only, for the moment. Perhaps tomorrow?’

He nods. ‘I understand. No problem. Could you just . . . maybe later, when the family have gone . . . could you just tell her I was here? And tell her I said thank you.’

The doctor smiles. ‘Thank you?’

He smiles back. ‘Long story. She’ll understand.’

The doctor disappears. Goes back to saving lives, fixing disabilities, mending bodies. Little things like that.

Cody takes one more look at Parker. He understands now that the man’s tears are there through sheer relief. And the intensity of his relief is due to his unbounded love for Webley.

And that’s all Cody needs to know.

*

She suspects.

Cody can see it going through Blunt’s head. She knows that more went on than Cody is telling her.

He spins her a story, of course. Tells her what her official head wants to hear. Says that he had to intervene when Chris decided to kill Dobson, and that’s when Chris got the drop on him.

He leaves out the bit about offering himself as a substitute for Webley. Doesn’t seem relevant, somehow.

Blunt doesn’t care. She wants to write this up as a success story, not as a suicide mission. She’s more than happy to polish this to a high gloss.

And so she tells Cody how brave he was, and how committed he was to stopping the killer. She congratulates him on discovering the truth about Dobson’s background and the link to Hillsborough that would surely have led to an arrest before long. She tells him that officers have already gone into Chris’s house – a simple semi-detached property near the old student residences in Mossley Hill – and found there a room full of birds of all shapes and sizes. When counted up and added to the four already left with the initial police victims, the birds total ninety-six – exactly the same as the number of Hillsborough victims. Cody’s efforts, she assures him, helped to prevent a much greater proportion of those creatures being found dead alongside police corpses.

Cody nods along. Feels the accolades hitting him, but not being absorbed. In his opinion this is not a time for triumph, for celebration. He knows only too well about trauma and the effects it can have on the mind. How much more devastating must those effects be on the mind of a young child? You have watched people die all around you. You have heard the screaming and seen the terror on the faces of those having the very breath squeezed out of them. And even when you get out of there, your ordeal is not over. Not by a long chalk. Because then you are told that it is all your fault. The responsibility for those ninety-six deaths is yours.

The trauma, the overwhelming sense of guilt, and then the deaths of both of your parents. How much worse can it get? Why is it surprising that a mind can snap under such strain?

And how many others are still suffering not only because of what happened at Hillsborough, but also because of the lies that were told about it so brazenly?

The self-questioning continues when Cody finally goes home. He experiences a whole cocktail of emotions. He is happy that Webley is alive, of course, even though she was so badly injured. There will be scars – physical and mental. But he is also reminded of how he felt when he was up there on that roof with her.

He was ready to die. It’s something that he could easily convince himself was an act of heroism to save others. But that would be kidding himself. The painful truth is that he
wanted
to die. Ending his own life to save Webley’s was just a matter of expediency. Killing two birds with one stone – ho, ho.

He doesn’t think he can carry on like this. Talking things over with Webley helped, but he knows it’s transitory. She can’t risk alienating her fiancé again. Cody can’t allow her to do that. And so the pain will return. The nightmares will start up again. At some point he will crash and burn.

He dwells on this for the next couple of hours. Tries to decide what to do about his future, and reaches no conclusions.

Later, he is almost surprised to find himself in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Eventually, he drifts into a sleep that, if not disturbed, is deep enough to keep him blessedly unaware of reality for much longer than usual.

Except that it
is
disturbed.

The phone on his bedside table. Calling to him so loudly and urgently that its ensuing silence will be disorienting. The usual thing.

But no. Not the usual. Not this time.

He thinks he is dreaming at first – that he hasn’t really answered the phone, and is still living one of his many nightmares. That would make more sense. He could cope with that.

But this . . .

The screaming. Coming over the earpiece. Powerful and raw enough to stop his breathing and punch at his heart. What is this?

What it is, he realises, is himself. That’s
his
voice he can hear.
His
screaming.
His
pleading for the ordeal to end. He remembers it like it was yesterday, because it bursts into his mind every single day.

But this can’t be real. It has to be another hallucination. Like those in the building at the docks. It’s his mind toying with him again because he stubbornly refuses to get it fixed. Yes, that’s what this is.

And yet it seems so real.

And if it’s real . . .

Well, that means someone made an audio recording of what he was put through in that warehouse a year ago. It means they must have been there.

And it means that, for whatever unfathomable reason, they have finally decided to make themselves known to Cody.

That’s a link to past devilry that he thought had been severed for eternity.

That’s a beginning, just when he thought things were coming to an end.

What was it he told Webley about the men who had hurt him?

If I knew they were behind bars for the rest of their miserable lives, unable to hurt anyone else, then I really believe my problems would disappear.

Could this be the first step towards making that happen?

Nathan Cody has to hope so.

Acknowledgments

I would like to offer massive thanks to the following people for their part in making this book what it is:

My agent, Oli Munson, for believing in me, for letting me know when the words work and when they don’t, for getting me the fab deals, and for being a really nice guy.

Oli’s wonderful assistant, Becky Brown, for her perceptive editorial notes and all the other help she has given me since joining the agency.

Joel Richardson, my editor at Zaffre, for wanting the book, for being so passionate about it, and for doing such a fantastic job of whipping it into shape.

Steve May, and Rob and Mandy Callander – ex-police officers who provided me with a wealth of information about how the police do things, and who I hope will forgive me for the occasions on which I sacrificed that reality in the name of story.

Mario De Cabo Ramos, for allowing me such a close look at the amazing Royal Liver Building; and Terry McNamee, for being such a superb guide.

And, of course, my wife Lisa. Mere words don’t work here.

First published in Great Britain in 2016by Zaffre Publishing

This ebook edition published in 2016 by

Zaffre Publishing

80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE

www.zaffrebooks.co.uk

Copyright © David Jackson, 2016

The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-7857-6105-8

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-7857-6107-2

This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd

Zaffre Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Publishing Fiction, a Bonnier Publishing company

www.bonnierpublishingfiction.co.uk

www.bonnierpublishing.co.uk

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