Exodus Code (12 page)

Above his head, he heard a table being knocked over. Then the bed creaked as Gwen pushed it across the wood floor. Panic squeezed his chest, adrenalin spiking his system.

In that instant, terror gripped Rhys. He understood exactly what Gwen was doing. He had to stop her.

SERGEANT ANDY DAVIDSON carried a cup of milky tea and two chocolate biscuits into the main Swansea squad room and settled at his new desk. This was his favourite time of the work day, before too many of his shift had arrived to fil the room and he had a couple of minutes to himself to review the night-watch sergeant’s notes before thinking about the day’s assignments. He’d been shuttled around South Wales quite a bit over the last couple of years, a series of temporary attachments fol owing his unexpected promotion. He had a nasty feeling that the top brass now saw him as more trouble than he was worth. An unauthorised trip to London and a confrontation with some nameless MI5

spook had, Andy reckoned, led to this latest posting away from Cardiff.

Sliding his cup and saucer in front of his monitor, Andy set his hat on his desk, mussing his short blond hair. He dunked his biscuit in his tea and scrol ed through yesterday’s reports. Two burglaries, a rash of shoplifting, a fight at the cinema, disturbance of the peace at Bracelet Bay, an assault at the university library, an arson in a local stable, and a supermarket confrontation that had resulted in the store being closed for the rest of the day.

CID had been cal ed in to the supermarket incident and the assault in the library. The detectives were stil investigating the latter, but an arrest warrant had been issued an hour ago in the former. When Andy read the name on the warrant, his biscuit slipped from his fingers and dissolved into his tea.

‘Damn,’ he said, licking the melting chocolate from his fingers. Pushing his cup aside, he clicked on the ful report. The more he read, the more he thought the assault on the manager didn’t sound like his Gwen. And the other woman, the one who’d ripped her ear off, wel , she was obviously a nut job. Maybe escaped from the Del more Institute, he thought. Stil , he’d have to bring in Gwen. He’d do it himself, first thing after morning rol cal . It was the least he could do for his friend.

When he finished reading the supermarket file, something ‘pinged’ in his head. His new girlfriend, Bonnie from Blackpool, was taking psychology classes at the local col ege and she was teaching Andy to pay attention to his instincts, to be open to his ‘buried tiger.’

Grrr! Andy grinned at the thought of her. What would Bonnie have made of Gwen, he wondered.

The old Andy Davidson would have taken his hunch to his superiors, then settled back at his empty desk with his tea and biscuits. But this was the new Andy, and just because he’d turned down a transfer to bigger police districts to stay close to his mum didn’t mean he wasn’t ambitious, a trait Bonnie was fiercely encouraging. Andy was doing his best to please her in every way and if she liked his buried tiger, then he was going to keep it roaring.

Andy scrol ed back to the notes he’d read on the assault at the university.

Something odd about that one, too.

Gulping down his lukewarm tea, Andy snatched up the rest of his chocolate biscuits and headed out of the squad room.

RHYS TOOK THE narrow stairs two at a time, slipping once on the carpet tread, forgetting about his wrist and putting both hands down to steady himself.

Ignoring the pain that shot up his right arm, he crawled up the last few stairs on al fours. At the upstairs landing, he paused, steadying his breathing, focusing on Gwen’s whereabouts.

He couldn’t hear her movements now. Where was she? He tucked himself into an alcove at the end of the hal way and listened. Had she found what she was looking for?

Something heavy thumped to the floor and he realised that Gwen was tearing through the chest of drawers in Mary’s room. Why was she looking in there? Rhys stood up, his head aching, his wrist throbbing. He was puzzled – pleased, but puzzled. If Gwen was in Mary’s room, then she wasn’t looking for the key to her weapons store after al – she knew exactly where that was.

Or had she lost her memory as wel as her mind?

Gwen let out a shriek from the bedroom and then came flying into the hal way, spotted Rhys standing stunned at the other end and charged him.

Rhys darted out of the way, tripped and tumbled down the stairs, final y able to stop himself before crashing through the banister at the bottom. He couldn’t let himself waste time thinking about what new parts of his body were broken.

Scrambling to his feet, he scampered like a wild animal back up the stairs, hol ering at Gwen to stop. This time when he got to the landing, he could hear Gwen tearing up their bedroom.

His heart stopped when she stood laughing at him in the bedroom doorway, the key to her gun locker dangling from her hand.

With al his strength, Rhys threw himself at his wife. They fel backwards into the bedroom, careening off the wardrobe, and, with Gwen pummel ing him with her fists and spitting obscenities at him, they crashed to the floor. Rhys’s head smashed against the wooden base of the bed and for a second everything went black. It was enough time for Gwen to free herself from his clutches and dart from the room.

Rhys pul ed himself up, the pain of his injuries nothing compared to the terrible fear that gripped his insides. Gwen had the key and he could hear her thundering down the stairs.

Anwen was silent, having final y cried herself to sleep.

Please God, let Gwen come after me first, thought Rhys.

He crawled out to the landing. Phone. The stairs in front of him were rol ing and he felt like he was going to vomit. He had to get help.

Because what if he couldn’t stop Gwen? Or worse, what if he passed out before he could even try.

Rhys patted his pockets. Shit. No phone. He remembered it was sitting on the kitchen table. Swal owing back bile, he peered over the banister. Gwen had dragged the gun locker up from the basement. It was on the floor near the front door and she was starting to unlock it. He wasn’t going to be able to cal for help; he’d have to stop her on his own.

No choice, mate.

By the time Rhys was halfway down the stairs, Gwen had popped up the lid of the locker. She glanced at Rhys when he leapt the last few stairs, landing in front of her. She lifted out her gun, and Rhys thought he was a dead man.

Gwen pointed the gun at his chest, screaming, ‘You’re not leaving me here alone any more! I wil not smel peaches any more.’

‘OK, love, OK. You can do whatever you want. It’s your decision, but let’s make it without the gun,’ said Rhys, taking two steps closer, reaching his arms out to her, pain shooting to his shoulder from his swel ing wrist, his voice hol ow in his head.

‘Don’t you come near me, your words have too many points,’ Gwen hissed, stabbing the gun at Rhys. ‘You’re hurting me.’

‘Fine. I’l stay right here.’ He backed up slowly. ‘But can you please put the gun away, Gwen. You need help. Can’t you see? This isn’t you talking.’

From behind him Rhys could hear the creak of a floorboard, the scrape of a chair shifting, and then the living room door swung open and Anwen toddled out into the hal .

‘Mummy! Uppie.’

ON HIS WAY down the cracked tile stairs, Andy passed some of his officers on their way up from the ground-floor lockers. He greeted them distractedly, stil puzzling over what he’d read in yesterday’s incident reports. Two floors down, he stopped outside the security door to the video surveil ance unit. Andy’s mate Tommy Livesy, who played rugby with him on the over-30 team, was on duty. Good – Tommy would keep Andy’s request quiet until he figured out exactly what his discovery meant. Andy may have been listening to his inner tiger, but he didn’t think anyone else would listen without some persuading.

Swiping his identification on the keypad, Andy shoved the door open. A bank of computers in a horseshoe faced him with two officers watching a hundred screens of CCTV feeds and a few private security cameras in financial buildings in Swansea.

His mate turned when the door opened. ‘Andy, my man. What brings you to our lair?’

‘Nothing important. A couple of questions from last night’s watch.’ Andy nodded at the other officer at the desk. Tommy got the message. ‘Jan, a minute. I’l keep an eye.’

Jan grabbed her cigarettes and lighter, but when she passed Andy she stopped and put her hand out. Andy rol ed his eyes and handed over his last two chocolate biscuits. She smiled and left.

‘So what’s up?’

Andy pul ed Jan’s chair next to Tommy’s. ‘Have you got the CCTV from that supermarket disturbance yesterday?’

‘Give me a second.’

While Andy waited, he watched the men, women and children, moving across the screens in front of him. It was mesmerising and he wondered how anyone could keep track, and then he decided that maybe it was best if they couldn’t.

‘Got it. I’l send it to the screen on the top left.’

He did and it took Andy a few seconds to adjust his attention to what he was looking at. The camera was on the shop’s front door, sweeping across the aisles every minute or two, which meant that Andy could only see the events in the breakfast aisle at a distance. Plus, the shifting camera made it feel like he was looking at a video flipbook, the sweep of the camera across the store far from smooth.

Didn’t matter. Only a few minutes in, Andy was watching Gwen Cooper assault the store manager.

Andy reached for his notebook, quickly finding the page with the file numbers and names for the other two local disturbances. Tommy took the notebook up, glancing at the page before he passed it back to Andy. ‘Did you want to see the video for that one, too? Strange times there and al .’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Andy, sitting back down.

‘DI Horn was in here first thing this morning asking for the video for that file,’

answered Tommy. ‘Thought maybe you were working the case too.’

‘Let’s have a look, then,’ said Andy, turning back to the screens. ‘And if anyone asks, I’m working both cases.’

‘This video’s in colour so it’s not as grainy as the first one.’ Tommy cued up the video and Andy realised immediately that he was looking at a floor in an imposing-looking building. ‘It’s the main library at the university. They’ve had problems with students having sex in the stacks.’

‘I’d’ve checked out a book once or twice,’ laughed Andy, ‘if I’d known that was going on.’

‘They instal ed a state-of-the-art surveil ance system last term.’ Tommy fast-forwarded the video. ‘Check out the curly-haired dude with the droopy pants.’

Andy and Tommy watched as a young male student and his giggling girlfriend turned into an aisle of floor-to-ceiling books where they became a snogging frenzy of clumsy clutches and slobbering kisses.

The camera was angled in such a way that the students were never quite in ful view, the camera catching them only when they moved out of the canyon of books and into the camera’s ful field of vision. Their antics were clearly not the main event, though – Tommy sped up the camera, hitting play when the students were attempting to loosen each other’s jeans.

At that moment, a middle-aged woman in a tan shirt dress with a wide belt sprinted across the screen and charged into the couple, taking them both down.

‘Jesus,’ said Andy, ‘where did she come from?’ He knew from his notes that the woman was the head librarian.

‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ said Tommy. ‘Keep watching.’

At first the coupling students were too stunned to react, but after the young man got his jeans fastened and scrambled up from the floor, he grabbed the librarian and tried to haul her off his girlfriend. The older woman reached above her head, grabbed a hefty tome from the shelf and, with al her weight behind the swing, she smacked the book across the young man’s head, splitting his lip and sending a tooth flying.

‘Ow!’ said Andy, putting his hand to his own mouth. ‘That had to hurt.’

The young man crumbled to the floor, obviously in considerable pain. For a few beats, none of the three were visible on the screen until the young woman, screaming hysterical y, came back into view, slammed into the librarian, pinning her to the floor with her knees.

‘What the hel is she doing?’ asked Andy, leaning closer to the screen.

‘According to DI Horn, the student pummel ed the librarian’s face to a pulp.’

Andy kept his eye on the screen, trying to track the girl’s movements separately from the librarian’s, but it was difficult because of the camera’s angle and their heightened frenzy. A few seconds later, the noise had attracted three nearby students, who charged the women on the floor, pul ing the girl off the librarian, holding her back until university security rushed into the stacks and imposed control.

Tommy stopped the tape. ‘According to Horn, al three are in the emergency ward at St Helen’s. The boyfriend’s had surgery on his jaw and the young woman’s in shock. Horn’s trying to sort out what happened.’

‘Too bad we don’t have another angle,’ said Andy. ‘I don’t suppose we’ve got any students with their mobiles on this.’

‘Nah. Horn said even the students who pul ed them apart didn’t see the actual assault. Just the aftermath.’

Andy stared more closely at the paused tape, at the young woman’s back as she sat astride the librarian, her arms frozen in the air above her head, her knees pressed against the librarian’s shoulders. Andy was thinking about the similarities that had caught his attention in the first place about this case. He could hear Bonnie nudging him to think.