The Teacher: A shocking and compelling new crime thriller – NOT for the faint-hearted! (26 page)

‘You’re fucking crazy! You didn’t help anyone!’ Adrian remembered the pictures of the boy, Sebastian must have been his name. He was nauseated that Harry had considered him for ‘treatment’. He thought about the pictures again and felt sick at the idea of Tom being alone with Harry, even though he had been many times before in the past.

‘Hello Harry.’ A voice came from the doorway. Adrian turned to see a man dressed in black. The man turned to Adrian and smiled, almost embarrassed. ‘Detective.’

Harry’s demeanour changed again, he was afraid.

‘Sebastian, you’ve grown.’ Harry backed away as the man moved forward.

‘My name is Parker now.’

‘I can’t let you hurt him … Parker, he has my son.’

Harry lurched forwards and grabbed Grey, he had a gun in his hand. He pressed it hard against her throat. Adrian recognised it instantly as the gun that he had supposedly lost in the evidence against Ryan Hart.

‘Up to your old tricks again, Harry?’ Parker said.

‘You leave me alone or none of you will ever find the boy!’ Harry shouted desperately.

Adrian looked at Parker, the man who had apparently perpetrated all of the hideous acts he had seen over the last few months, then he looked at Harry. If Tom’s life weren’t at stake then he might let Parker have his way with Harry, it scared him that he felt that way.

‘Harry, if I let you go then I’ll never see Tom again, just take me to him, you and me, no one else.’

‘You can’t make that promise!’ Harry screamed back.

‘Fine then, me and Grey, we leave now, we go and look for Tom and you and Parker here can have a good old catch-up.’

‘You won’t find him without me.’

‘Grey, are you OK?’ Adrian asked, noticing the colour had drained from her cheeks.

‘I’m fine, don’t you worry about me,’ she gasped, Adrian could see she was anything but fine.

Morris grabbed her by the hair and yanked her backwards forcefully, edging closer to the exit. He slid the barrel of the gun into the gap in her blouse and yanked it downwards, the buttons flew off and her shirt flew open. Adrian could see her chest heaving, she was struggling to breathe; he knew a panic attack when he saw one. He saw her scar again. It ran from under her breasts to way down past her waist, he wondered how she had survived a cut like that. Morris pulled her back to look at it.

‘I heard all about this, at least I finally get a chance to see it.’

‘Fuck off!’ she spat at him. He pressed the gun against the remodelled skin.

‘It’s harder to cut through skin that’s already healed, isn’t it, Parker? I bet a bullet would do it though.’ Morris stroked the scar with the back of his hand. Adrian’s eyes stayed on Morris’ finger, checking he didn’t put any more pressure on the trigger. ‘Do you know the story behind this, Miles? Or haven’t you had your hands all over it yet?’

‘Shut up, Harry.’ Adrian found himself clenching his fists, wishing to God he didn’t have to hold back, wishing he could paint the walls with one good punch.

‘Grey here was lucky enough to be spared the inconvenience of motherhood. Apparently it didn’t suit her professional aspirations.’ He pulled her close to him, the gun thumping against her waist. ‘She’s going to be coming with me now. I’ll take her to Tom and then …’

‘You’re not taking her anywhere!’ Adrian said. The panic was evident on Grey’s face. ‘Take me if you have to take anyone!’

Adrian looked at Parker, still focused on Harry but his eyes were glistening. Just then Grey grabbed hold of the gun and pushed her finger hard down on Morris’ causing the gun to fire through her shoulder. Just under her collarbone. Morris recoiled back grabbing his arm, the bullet had gone straight through the fleshy part of his bicep. Imogen slumped to the ground, doubled over and covered in blood. She had one knee raised to her chest in an effort to slow the bleeding or control the pain, Adrian wasn’t sure which. She needed a hospital but Miles couldn’t let Harry out of his sight. Morris pointed the gun at Parker and fired, Parker dived on to the ground. Morris moved around the room, firing until the clip was empty, then he ran out of the room. The sound of his car starting followed just moments later. Adrian rushed to Grey’s side and grabbed hold of her hand.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’

‘Don’t worry about me, Miley,’ she barely managed to say.

‘You can look after yourself, I know.’

‘I had a plan.’

‘It was a terrible plan, Grey.’ He stroked her forehead and her smile turned to a sob.

‘I couldn’t let him take me!’ she said through clenched teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry … oh my God … Tom.’

‘I will look after her.’ Parker put his hand on Adrian’s shoulder. ‘Don’t let him get away. Go and get your son.’

Adrian looked at Parker, he had a decision to make only it didn’t feel like a decision at all, he had no choice. He had to go after Harry. He looked down at Grey again and she was so completely white, like porcelain, he couldn’t see the freckles across her nose any more.

‘I should arrest you,’ Adrian said to Parker.

‘I know,’ Parker said, he ripped the sleeve from his jacket and pressed it against Grey’s wound.

‘If I see you again I will arrest you. That’s a promise.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m sorry, Grey.’ Adrian took the keys from her pocket and rushed out of the room; leaving her in the hands of the perpetrator of the most violent and horrific acts he had ever seen.

The End

Adrian couldn’t think about Grey as he followed Harry, he was a fair distance behind him but he knew where he was heading – the airport. Harry had a friend on the airlines; in fact, Adrian didn’t doubt that he had friends everywhere. He had seen the face of the killer and it was not what he expected. He expected a monster but instead all he saw was a lost boy. He saw someone who had been unravelled, someone who had been unmade. It’s a terrible thing to have your mind played with, for someone to fundamentally change you from the inside out. Of course every person you meet in life has an impact on who you become, no matter how small the interaction, everything matters. Like fingerprints on a sheet of paper that is being passed down a line. Some fingers are dirtier than others; some leave a more permanent stain. He thought about Andrea and how she would be beside herself, for all of her numerous faults her adoration of Tom was not on the list. She was a genuine and warm mother, a damn sight more than Adrian had ever had. He couldn’t think about what Andrea was going through right now, and if he told her what he knew she would be even more distraught, so he just centred all of his thoughts on one thing, getting Tom back.

It was hard to maintain the focus on the task at hand when the task at hand was so utterly horrifying to contemplate. Adrian had to disassociate his feelings or he wouldn’t be able to do this. He was doing this for Andrea. If he actually thought about where Tom might be or what he was going through he could feel his heart tie in knots, he would be no use to anyone, so for now it was someone else’s problem. It couldn’t be his.

The turn off for the airport was next, Adrian put his foot down, knowing that Harry’s adrenaline would surge now, the idea that he was almost away, almost home free. Adrian pulled into the taxi bay at the front of the airport and ran out of the car, into the airport and up to the security personnel on the door. They reached for their batons as they saw him approaching, he realised he was still covered in Grey’s blood so he held his badge up for them to see.

‘I need you to secure this airport, there’s a very dangerous man here.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, we would actually need some kind of official documentation to put anything like that in motion.’

‘I could just stand in the middle there and scream bomb if you want? Help me out guys, come on!’ Adrian pleaded with the guards.

‘About five minutes before you arrived another guy went running through, he had some blood on him, too … and a badge. We asked but he said he had an accident with his clippers, showed us his ear so we let him through.’

‘Thank you!’ Adrian shouted as he ran towards the gate. Exeter airport wasn’t very big and it didn’t take Adrian long to reach the gate. He scanned the crowds but he couldn’t see Harry anywhere. He saw a bloody handprint on the bathroom door. He couldn’t imagine anyone getting away with this at Heathrow. He went in and Harry was standing at the sink scrubbing his hands. Harry’s coat was on the counter and he had duct tape holding a tissue in place over the bullet wound in his arm.

‘Where’s the gun?’

‘Airports, even the little ones, don’t allow guns.’ Morris shrugged. ‘Frisk me if you want.’

‘I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘I had to try, you know?’

‘I’m not letting you go.’

‘You’ll never see Tom again.’

‘When you left I knew there was no chance I would ever see him again if I didn’t catch up to you.’

‘So what now?’

‘You’re going to take me to him.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or I just let your old friend find you. You saw what he did to those other bodies. You should have seen what he did to Lowestoft.’

‘They were all soft, he would never have got to me like that.’

‘I will make sure he does, if you don’t give me Tom I swear to God I will hold you down while he slices you open.’

‘You don’t have it in you, Miles.’ Harry smirked, grabbing a paper towel and drying his hands.

‘Try me.’

‘You can’t touch me, Adrian, I have people who will take you down.’

‘What people? Daniels killed himself.’

‘Mike Daniels was a stand-up bloke but no, I don’t mean him, I mean people who matter, other people on the force, higher up than me.’

‘What the hell were you lot up to? Why would you do those terrible things?’

‘It was a different time back then.’

‘Not that fucking different. Torturing kids? Jesus, Harry, you’re Tom’s godfather!’ Adrian could hardly believe what he was hearing.

‘We had a purpose, we had a mission! There’s evidence to prove that you can change that kind of behaviour in people. You can make them normal.’

‘What do you know about normal? Look at what you’ve done. You created a killer of the likes I have never seen before.’

‘He was different. He had protection on the inside, his grandfather wouldn’t let us do what we needed to do, he pussied out at the last minute. That’s why we couldn’t help him.’

‘He didn’t need your help! None of them did! There was nothing wrong with them!’

‘Don’t give me that liberal bullshit.’

‘What about the boy, the homeless kid? He was one of your … victims.’

‘Now that wasn’t me. Pete took it too far. Made the other kid, Sebastian, watch while they cut his friend to pieces, that’s what sent him over the edge, not what we did.’

‘You think what you were doing wasn’t too far?’

‘You need to leave this alone, Miles, for your own sake. You have no idea how high this goes.’

‘I’m not afraid of heights, sir. Whoever this person is, I’m not afraid of them.’

‘You should be afraid. It’s not one person, Miles, it’s any person. These people are everywhere.’

‘Were you getting kids from the school? Is that how you got them? Why did no one miss them?’

‘The school had a deal with some of the foster homes in the area, they would take on the brightest and the best. All part of an outreach programme. Jeff Stone was in charge of that operation. The paperwork is never that tight on kids in the system, even now, but back then it was virtually non-existent.’

‘The way you talk about it, it makes me sick. Can you hear yourself? You actually believe in that shit?’

‘I thought you might understand. What we were doing was just our own little indulgence; our experiment. You rounded up all the players in that game, I’m the last one. But the thing is it’s much bigger than that. There are people in this city who have a lot to lose if this ever comes to light. You wait. There are things going on that you just don’t see. You’re not even looking. Those people just let us do our thing as long as it didn’t interfere with their operation. No one talks about them because you never know who is listening.’

‘You’re bluffing. Stop with this conspiracy nonsense, you sound even more nuts, if that’s even possible. There is no “they”.’

‘I wish that were true. This conversation here has put me in more danger than I was ever in from that boy. They aren’t interested in making things better, your case is going to disappear and maybe your career with it. I’m telling you, if you keep digging on this, Adrian, you’re going to dig yourself into an early grave.’

‘I think you’re trying to give me a reason not to hurt you, but … I still really want to hurt you. More than that though I want my son back, Harry. If you really want to save your neck you’ll give him to me right now.’ Adrian grabbed his arm.

‘OK, I’ll take you to him.’ Harry looked down at Adrian’s hand. Adrian’s fingers were white his grip was so tight.

Adrian marched Harry back to the car. He nodded at the security guard who had helped him before. If this panned out he would come back and thank him properly. Adrian cable tied Harry’s hands together before throwing him in the passenger side. He got into the driver’s side and they pulled out of the airport.

It was still light but the sky was grey, rain clouds threatened as they drove along the dual carriageway towards the coast.

‘Take the next slip road on the left,’ Harry finally said. Adrian did as he was told. He wanted with every fibre of his being for this not to be a ruse, but there was a niggling feeling in the back of his mind, poking at him. If there was anything that Adrian knew about Harry it was that he knew nothing about Harry. Each revelation today had been more shocking than the last to the point where there was no familiarity any more. Harry was not a human being, Adrian could see that now. The veil was lifted and he could see the monster underneath.

They drove through a forest road lined with trees, like a tunnel of green, what little sun there was poked through the trees with a cold white glow. On the other side they were faced with the staggering beauty of the countryside. The patchwork quilt of greens and yellow, soft and billowing, like a blanket covering the vale. Tiny dots of rain appeared on the window, just a light shower. As Adrian turned on the wipers he heard a click, he looked over to Harry to see he had undone his seatbelt. Why? Quickly, Harry un-clicked Adrian’s seatbelt too before grabbing the wheel and thrusting it to the right. Adrian heard the crunch as his car broke through the barrier, he saw the drop, quickly he grabbed at his seatbelt and plugged it back in. Then the force of the speed of the car versus the chunks of wood and rock that stood in its path meant the only thing left to do was pray this wasn’t the end. Adrian had never been very good at praying.

Imogen couldn’t feel anything any more, she could still hear and she could still talk, although she didn’t understand the words she was saying. She was cold, she knew that much. She was grateful for the adrenaline, it was the only thing keeping her conscious at the moment. The man stroking her hair, he was this cold-hearted killer they had been chasing. She was propped up in his lap and he was holding her hand. He stroked her hair and he talked to her, soothed her, keeping her in the present. The last time she had been attacked there had been no one with her until the police finally came, she didn’t even know if anyone would come. This felt so much better than that.

‘The ambulance is on its way.’

‘Thank you,’ she heard herself say. She was somewhere between lucidity and a dream. She couldn’t move towards the dream, the dream was the end.

‘Keep talking to me. If you go into shock you will almost definitely die, stay with me even though it hurts. Your name is Imogen, right?’

‘Yes, Imogen.’

She thought about her mother, how her mother would take her death as a personal affront. She could just imagine her telling all her friends, ‘I told her it would end like this’ as they comforted her at the funeral.

‘Did you know that before Shakespeare, that name didn’t exist?’

‘No, I didn’t know that,’ she managed to say. She concentrated hard on his soft voice, concentrated even harder on what she was saying back to him.

‘It was a mistake at the printers, they were supposed to type the name Innogen instead.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I love to read. For a long time books were my only friends.’

‘How did you get away?’

‘I’ll tell you if you tell me why you shot yourself.’

‘A friend told me this was a good place to shoot myself. He forgot to mention how much it would bloody hurt.’ She made a mental note to punch Tunney really hard in the shoulder if she ever got out of this.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Before I transferred here … I was on a case … I was held against my will and assaulted, stabbed and left for dead … I thought I was going to die …’ The burning sensation in her shoulder was getting worse, she focused harder on what she was trying to say. ‘I couldn’t go through that again … I promised myself I would never … oh God … I don’t know how you got through what you did.’ She started to cry. ‘I haven’t slept since it happened, not properly, and it was nothing compared to what they put you through.’

She remembered the pictures from the museum and wished she could comfort him back. If he had been her son she would have taken care of him. When she had found out she was pregnant she had been shocked, unhappy, but when they stuck the knife in her she would have done anything in that moment to protect the life that had just begun growing inside her.

‘I can hardly remember getting away, my mind has blocked out so many details. My grandfather gave me the key to the shackles I was in and some money to run away with,’ said Sebastian. ‘I started a fire. They left me alone for a few hours, thought I was unconscious, but I was just pretending; my body had stopped responding to anything and so it was easy enough to pretend to be out cold. So yes, I started a fire. There are a lot of dry old things in a museum. I grabbed the lighter from my grandfather’s desk and set fire to a diorama largely made out of husks, it went up so quick. The official word was electrical fire, but that wasn’t true. My grandfather paid off the man investigating the cause of the fire and no one was any the wiser.’

‘Did you know the boy they killed?’

‘He was my friend, he was the reason I was there, I was the reason he was there.’

‘You saw them kill him?’ she whispered, finding it harder and harder to talk. She felt as though she were falling, she was waiting for the crash but it never came, just this endless feeling of falling.
Is this what dying feels like?

‘You can get through this, just stay awake, trust me. It was a good shot, straight through, most of the danger from shooting comes from infection if the bullet stays in, we know it didn’t do that. Come on, you can do this.’

‘I can’t.’ She began to cry.

‘Just focus on staying awake, I won’t let you die.’

‘OK,’ she sobbed. She could hear the ambulance coming, along with police cars. ‘You need to go, if they catch you …’

‘I won’t leave you.’

‘Please, I promise not to die, I really promise.’ She couldn’t save the baby that had been inside her, she couldn’t save the boys that had been tortured at the hands of those animals, but she could at least give this man a way out, she would not be the reason he ended up in prison. She felt him gently moving from underneath her and slowly resting her head on the ground. He squeezed her hand affectionately and then she could have sworn she felt him kiss her forehead. She heard the window open and then she was alone.