Justice for the Damned (36 page)

‘Have you tried phoning her?’

‘About a dozen times. But she’s not answering. That’s why I’m so worried.’

‘There’s no need to be. She’s probably just been taken to the station to be interviewed.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought, but…’ Staci tailed off uneasily.

‘But what?’

‘I don’t know. I just didn’t like the look of that car. If it was coppers, why did they sit outside the house so long before taking her in?’

‘Did you get a look at the driver?’

‘No. The windows were tinted. But I took down the reg. It’s PK38 LMG.’

Reece thought for a moment. Staci’s instincts told her something was wrong. That was one thing prostitutes and cops had in common – they knew better than to ignore their instincts. On the street, that was often the difference between living and dying. ‘OK, I tell you what. I’ll phone someone and check that Amber’s where I think she is.’

‘Thanks, Reece.’

‘I’ll speak to you in a minute.’ Reece hung up and dialled Scott Greenwood. When his colleague picked up, he said, ‘Hi, Scott, it’s Reece, how’s things?’

‘Could be better. Mind you, I’m not complaining. How’s your dad doing?’

‘Not too good.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Any developments in the Winstanley investigation?’

‘No.’

‘What? None at all?’

‘No, not a bloody one. We’ve been hitting the brick wall for days now. The DCI’s convinced Bryan Reynolds could give us the answers we want, but he seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet.’

Reece’s head was suddenly reeling. Doug hadn’t told Garrett about Amber! Jesus fucking Christ, why hadn’t he told him? Was he somehow involved in what had gone on at the Winstanley house? He had to be. What other explanation could there be? But involved how? His mind raced over the possibilities. Doug must have realised Vernon Tisdale would put him on to Freddie Harding. So he obviously hadn’t known Freddie was connected to the Winstanleys until Amber came forward. That meant there had to be someone else, someone who didn’t want the police going anywhere near Freddie, someone with the money and influence to arrange for witnesses to disappear. Reece put his hand to his eyes as if trying to block out a painfully bright light. Was it really possible? Doug was a crooked bastard, but was he crooked enough to protect a rapist, maybe even to commit murder? If he was, no one who knew about Freddie was safe.

‘Listen, Scott,’ said Reece, struggling to keep his tone casual, ‘I need a favour. Some arsehole backed into me and drove off this morning. Can you run a plate for me?’

‘Sure. What’s the reg?’

‘PK38 LMG.’

The muffled sound of typing came over the line. Then Scott said, ‘Black Golf GTI?’

‘No, a red BMW.’

‘O-Oh, here we go. The Golf was reported stolen six months ago in Liverpool. The plates must have been swapped. Sorry, Reece, you’re not having much luck at the moment, are you?’

‘No,’ Reece agreed grimly. The fact that the BMW had dodgy plates gave yet more credence to Staci’s feeling that something was badly amiss. It also meant the lead was a dead end. ‘Thanks, Scott.’

‘No problem. And good luck with your dad. Tell him we’re all thinking about him.’

‘I will.’

Reece ducked into his car and drove fast to Staci’s house. Her eyes widened when she saw him. ‘What are you doing here? I thought—’

‘Don’t worry about that now,’ broke in Reece, scanning the street uneasily. So far as he could see, there was no one in any of the parked cars. He stepped into the hallway, closing and locking the door behind himself.

Staci put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God, it’s Amber, isn’t it? Something
has
happened to her.’

‘I don’t know. Not for sure. All I know right now is she’s not at the station.’

‘I knew it! I fucking knew it. Oh God, oh God, what are we going to do?’

‘I’m going to find out where Amber is. You’re going to pack a bag and go stay in a hotel for a few nights.’

Staci shook her head. ‘I can’t leave here. What if she comes back? She might need me.’

I don’t think she’s coming back.
Reece kept the thought to himself. He didn’t want to panic Staci any more than she already was. ‘She’s got your number, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘There’s no point arguing, Staci. You can’t stay here anyway. Wayne wants you out.’

Staci’s eyebrows pinched together. ‘Why?’

Reece sighed. ‘I wanted to do this differently. I wanted it to be a… I don’t know, a celebration.’

‘Just tell me, Reece.’

‘I paid off your debt.’

‘What? All fourteen-odd thousand?’

Reece nodded. In his mind, he’d pictured Staci’s eyes lighting up with joy at the news. But instead, they became narrow, almost suspicious. ‘Where did you get that kind of money from?’ she asked.

‘What does it matter where it came from? All that matters is we can be together. We can live together.’

Reece reached out to put his hands on Staci’s shoulders, but she took a step backwards. ‘Who did you tell about Amber?’

‘Only Doug.’

‘No one else?’

Reece felt a sharp pang of hurt. Staci was staring at him as though trying to work out if he was who she’d thought he was. ‘No. I swear to you, Staci, I’d never knowingly do anything to hurt you or anyone you care about.’

Staci continued to look narrowly at Reece. ‘I’ll get my things together,’ she said after a moment, as if she’d accepted his words. But a certain distance remained in her eyes.

As she hurried upstairs, Reece stared dejectedly after her. This was supposed to be the moment when their life together really started. But instead, it felt as if a new wedge had been driven between them. Staci reappeared with a suitcase. Reece took it off her and carried it to his car. As she got into the passenger seat, he said, ‘Lock the doors and wait here.’

Reece crossed the street and hammered on Amber’s door. He shouted her name through the letter box. No response. He hadn’t expected one. He just needed to be sure. There was so much hanging in the balance. So many futures. So many lives.

‘Have you any idea where Amber might be?’ asked Staci as they drove towards the city centre.

‘Yes.’

‘I could come with you.’

Reece shook his head. ‘I need you to get a room and stay there until you hear from me.’

He pulled over in front of a tall, wedge-shaped building of tinted glass with ‘Novotel’ above its entrance. He proffered what remained of the money Doug had given him. She hesitated to take it. ‘What if I don’t want to stay in this city any more? What if I was to go to the station and get on the next train out of here?’

The thought of it was like a physical pain in Reece’s chest. Part of him wanted to possess Staci, to own her, but it was a part of him he would never give in to. He’d seen what possessiveness could do, the way it ate you up and turned you into everything you hated. ‘I’d try to stop you, but I wouldn’t force you to stay. I’d never force you to do anything.’

The distance left Staci’s eyes. She leaned in and kissed Reece on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘Be careful,’ she added, taking the money and getting out of the car.

Reece watched her until she was inside the hotel’s lobby. He turned the car and headed back to Hillsborough. As he passed through the shadow of the football stadium, he glanced at the street where Grace Kirby’s parents lived. If he continued along the road he was on it would, he knew, eventually bring him to the house where Grace Kirby, Mark Baxley and Amber had been raped and abused, and where God knows how many others had suffered similarly, perhaps even been murdered.
Is Doug really part of that?
he asked himself again.
And what the fuck are you going to do if he is?
His hands clenched on the steering wheel as Doug’s words echoed back to him like a bitter prophecy.
We’re locked together now. If one of us goes down, both of us go down.

Reece cruised past the headquarters of Steel City Security. In the yard, a man built like a heavyweight boxer was bending over the Audi’s boot. The man closed the boot and headed around the back of the building. A baseball cap shadowed his face, but even so Reece recognised him. His name was Liam Collins. They’d gone through police training and risen through the ranks together.
They’re me, along with some good friends of ours
, Doug had said about his business partners. But Reece had never counted Liam a friend. There was a mean streak a mile wide in the guy. He liked to pick fights. And once he got going with his fists, it was hard to make him stop. Reece was only too aware that he himself wasn’t exactly a saint. But unlike Liam, he took no pleasure out of hurting others. When Liam had been brought up on a brutality charge, the only surprise was that it had taken five years for it to happen.

Reece parked up further along the street. He got out of the car and, watching out for CCTV cameras, skirted the wall that enclosed the yard. He jumped and caught hold of the top of the wall. His face twisted into a grimace as shards of glass cemented in amongst the razor-wire cut into his fingers. But he didn’t let go. He pulled himself up and peered over the top. Behind the building there was a garage, its door open, revealing the front end of a red BMW. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly, as if hoping that when he opened them he would discover the BMW was a hallucination produced by his troubled brain. But there was no denying the truth of his eyes. Surely this confirmed it. Surely there could be no more doubt. Doug was behind, or at least involved in, Amber’s disappearance.

It gave Reece a tight, almost queasy feeling in his stomach to see Liam polishing the BMW’s passenger door with a cloth and spray bottle.

Reece lowered himself back to the ground, indecision raking at his face. Grace Kirby was dead. Amy Sheridan – one of their own, for Christ’s sake – was dead. Amber was surely dead, or soon to be so. Who was next? Jim Monahan? Himself? Staci? He gave a sharp shake of his head. The thought of anyone hurting Staci was too much to bear. He took out his phone and found John Garrett’s number. His finger hovered over the dial button. If he pressed it, his career was over, his dreams of a life with Staci were over. What if he was wrong? What if Liam wasn’t cleaning away forensic traces of Amber? What if Doug’s purpose wasn’t to kill her, but to protect her? They were desperate, self-deceiving thoughts. He knew that in his gut. Just as Staci had known something was amiss. But he couldn’t bring himself to make the call, not while even the faintest flicker of doubt remained. He had to be absolutely one hundred per cent fucking sure.

Tyler slapped Edward’s face, not particularly hard, but hard enough to get his attention. Edward’s eyes focused on him briefly and vaguely, then faded back off to whatever other place they’d been lost in. His head lolled like a broken stem as Tyler hit him again. Tyler wrenched Edward’s chin towards him. ‘There’s no point pretending, Edward. I know you can hear me. I can see it in your eyes. I’m going to say the same to you as I said to Monahan. You’re going to die today. That’s not in question. The only question is, how? You can die slow or fast. It makes no difference to me. The choice is yours. All you have to do is tell me where the book is.’

Edward remained silent, his eyes seeming to stare through Tyler.

His face expressing neither disappointment nor annoyance, Tyler approached the drawers. He unlocked the uppermost and took out a leather roll tied up with string. He unfurled the roll on the floorboards, revealing an assortment of knives. There were long and short knives, knives with smooth and serrated blades, kitchen, combat and surgical knives. ‘Some people – people like yourself, perhaps – like to use all sorts of instruments for torturing prisoners. But all you really need are a few good knives.’

He plucked out a scalpel. A swift slash of it opened a short but deep cut in Edward’s soft, hairy paunch. Edward writhed and let out a small gasping scream.

‘Imagine if I did that a hundred times,’ said Tyler. ‘Do you really want to find out how that feels? And these are only love bites. What about when we get into the really messy stuff?’

Still Edward said nothing, although the tremors that vibrated through his body spoke as loudly as any words.

Tyler pressed the blade against Edward’s flesh again. Once, twice, ten, twenty times he repeated the procedure, until Edward’s stomach and chest were a patchwork of bloody, winking wounds. Edward shook his head frantically, his face glistening with tears, sweat, mucus and saliva. ‘No, Mummy,’ he sobbed, ‘I won’t! I won’t! You can’t make me.’

Doug entered the room. He looked at Edward with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. ‘Who’s he talking to?’

‘His mother.’

Doug shook his head. ‘The guy’s mad as a bag of frogs.’

‘Seemingly.’

‘There’s no seeming about it. Look at him, for fuck’s sake. You might as well put a bullet in his brain right now for all the sense you’ll get out of him.’

‘No. We’ve got a long way to go yet. Haven’t we, Edward?’ Tyler stooped to look into Edward’s pain-blurred eyes. ‘We can go on like this for days. But then you know that, don’t you? You’ve been where I’m standing. The Chinese have a word.
Lingchi.
It translates as
the lingering death
. You’ll know it better as the death by a thousand cuts. This punishment was reserved for the worst criminals, people like you and me. A really skilled executioner was said to be able to make the procedure last two or even three days.’ He glanced at Doug. ‘Hold his head steady.’

Doug moved behind Edward and grabbed the sides of his head. With an expert aim, Tyler darted the scalpel into one of Edward’s eyes, then the other, careful not to go deep enough to pierce the brain. A scream tearing from his throat, Edward wrenched his head sideways. Doug reeled away, his face specked with blood. He rubbed anxiously at his own eyes. ‘Jesus, Tyler, you could have warned me what you were going to do. Who knows what I could catch off the bastard.’

‘The executioner often started by putting out the condemned’s eyes,’ continued Tyler, ignoring Doug. ‘The idea being that the loss of one sense amplifies the others, and thus increases the pain.’