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  Caught in the Web - Text copyright © Emmy Ellis rev 2021

  Cover Art by Emmy Ellis @ studioenp.com © 2021

  All Rights Reserved

  Caught in the Web is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  The author respectfully recognises the use of any and all trademarks.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

  Warning: The unauthorised reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s written permission.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Robin wasn’t the brightest silver button in the box, but he had enough shine on him to know something was wrong when he saw it. Or didn’t see it, as the case may be. And, in this case, he didn’t see it. Harry was meant to be in his glass enclosure, and he wasn’t. Posed a bit of a problem, that, what with Harry being one of the zoo’s most prized tarantulas.

  “Fuck.” Robin rammed his fingers through his hair then clutched it tight—not that the gesture would do much to solve the problem, but that was what some people did, didn’t they, if they were stressed.

  And I’m bloody stressed.

  “What’s up?” Nathan chose that moment to stride into the tarantula room from where he’d been sorting through some insects that would be used for the arachnids’ dinner. “Don’t tell me Harry’s dead. He’s one of the favourites, isn’t he?”

  Nathan was new, only just getting to know which ones were popular. For some reason, Harry was. Always got a few oohs and aahs from whoever stared at him through the glass.

  Robin lowered his hand, and if his scalp could talk, it’d say it was thankful for the respite. “He’s…um…he’s gone.”

  “What?” Nathan rushed to stand beside him and peered through the glass. “I know I’m teaching a grandmother to suck eggs, but you looked in his hidey hole, yeah?”

  “Yep. Used a torch, did the usual checks like I taught you, but I’m telling you, he isn’t there. I thought I was imagining it at first, but…”

  “Um, that’s not good,” Nathan said.

  No, it wasn’t, and Robin wanted to tell Nathan he’d stated the obvious, but that would be taking his worry out on the new lad, and Robin didn’t want to do that. He remembered his own first day here, how important it had been to him to come across as competent and good with the creatures. Nathan was a kind sort and didn’t deserve the sharp side of anyone’s tongue. The poor kid appeared frantic with worry.

  Robin’s stomach muscles bunched. Harry was a rare arachnid, and if he’d managed to creep out of his enclosure—how, if the lid is always secure?—and was now hiding somewhere in the room, things could get hairier than the creature itself once the manager got wind of this. The arsehole would hit the roof. Questions would be asked—let’s face it, we’ll be grilled—and Robin and Nathan might even get the sack. The tarantula section would need to be closed to the public until Harry had been found. Bit of a bummer, as it was the school holidays this week, and kids loved seeing the ‘creepy-crawlies’.

  “You check,” Robin said. “Double-check, I mean.”

  Nathan got his slim torch out of his pocket and flashed the beam into the glass house. He cocked his head, hand shaking, and let out a shuddering breath. The room had CCTV, though, so maybe if they sifted through the footage they could spot Harry escaping and see where the big bugger had gone.

  “You’re right, he isn’t there.” Nathan switched his torch off and scratched his head, staring around. “He’d naturally go into hiding, so we need to check everywhere.”

  “Should we alert Mr Clarke now or later, do you think?” Robin didn’t fancy getting hauled over the coals by the manager any time soon—or ever—but wasn’t it better to get it over and done with?

  “Not yet. Clarke’s in a bad mood, so I heard. Something about an elephant crapping where he shouldn’t be crapping. Spoilt some sort of tree garden, apparently, as well. And like I said at the time of planting, having those types of trees in with those types of animals isn’t a good idea. I mean, trunks and tug of war, anyone? But did he listen to me? Did he eff. He just went on and—”

  “Stop.” Robin held up his hand. “You’re going into one about something completely different, and we should be focusing on where the fuck Harry is.”

  “Yeah. Jesus.” Nathan closed his eyes for a moment. “Um, I’ll check this room, you check the office, then we’ll search in the insect alcove.”

  That was where they kept the food for the tarantulas.

  They searched.

  No tarantula escapee.

  Robin wanted to throw up. With the pair of them in the insect alcove, he felt safer, like they could hide there and pretend none of this was happening.

  “The only thing left to do now is look at the CCTV,” he said.

  “Do we even have time before the zoo opens?” Nathan glanced at his watch.

  “We have to make time. If I run the footage on fast forward, it’ll only take a few minutes. We have an hour before…well, before we need to admit what’s happened.”

  Robin left the insect alcove situated on one side of the office and sat at the old scarred desk. On the computer, from the past twenty-four hours of surveillance, he brought up the saved file of the camera that was trained on Harry’s enclosure. He searched from the second he and Nathan had left the previous evening, at seven o’clock.

  On the screen, the tarantula room was dark apart from a dim light inside Harry’s glass case. Despite Robin using the fast-forward function, it was as if he stared at a static image of Harry sitting on his flat rock in the centre of the enclosure. Robin’s eyes glazed, and he blinked several times, peering in the bottom right corner to see the time.

  After midnight.

  Nathan sighed over his shoulder. It sounded shaky. Was he scared? Of a bollocking from Mr Clarke, or was it unease because a creature was missing? Or both? Robin could understand both. Mr Clarke was an arsehole when he got going on a rant, and as for the elusive Harry…well, they might not have searched as thoroughly as they’d thought and—

  “Stop!” Nathan said.

  Robin jabbed his finger down on the mouse. He hadn’t seen anything different from what he’d been staring at already and frowned. “What? There’s nothing going on. Harry’s still there, look.”

  “Yes, but go back a few frames. Slowly.” Nathan pointed to the right-hand side of the screen. “Get r
eady to watch closely, just there.” His pressed his fingertip to the monitor. “There, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Robin changed the speed of the search and went backwards, staring intently at where Nathan had indicated—the darkened area to the right of Harry’s enclosure, at the section of Formica fascia that separated Harry from Freda in her home next door. “Um, I don’t see anything.”

  “Keep watching,” Nathan said.

  Robin strained to spot anything significant—and failed. He wanted to tell Nathan the footage had played a trick on him, that maybe there had been a jolt on the screen or something, but he kept his mouth shut. The poor bloke was coiled tight. No sense in upsetting him further.

  Then came a miniscule movement, a shadow that was a degree darker than the Formica panel. The rounded corner of something?

  “Right, go back a tad more, to just before that appears,” Nathan said. “And I’ll put the speakers on.”

  “But it doesn’t look like anything much.” Robin did what Nathan had suggested.

  “But at the same time, it isn’t meant to be there, whatever it is.”

  “No, you’re right, it isn’t.”

  Robin chewed on his lower lip, waiting for the shadow ‘corner’ to show up again. There it was, the bottom of it about three inches wide. Then the screen cut it off, the longer side going right up to the top of the monitor.

  “Come on, my pretty,” someone whispered. A man.

  Robin jumped. “Fuck me, did you hear that?”

  “Yeah, I bloody well did. Christ…” Nathan leant forward. “Pause this one and bring up Freda’s footage, at the same point in time. No, just a bit before that.”

  Glad of something to do that would take his mind off the creepy-as-hell video voice, Robin paused Harry’s file then accessed Freda’s and skipped frames until he reached the right point. Once again, he selected the slow fast forward and waited. Freda was there, in the left-hand corner, right below her warming light. Then her whole enclosure was obliterated by a shadow, the screen almost black.

  “What the hell?” Robin breathed.

  “Fuck,” Nathan said. “Oh God.”

  “Come on, my pretty…” The disembodied voice.

  Spooked to hell and back, Robin pressed the stop icon, his hand shaking on the mouse so much the white cursor appeared as a demented, shivering arrow.

  “One enclosure up. Above Freda. Juliette’s footage,” Nathan said. “Watch that one.”

  Robin obeyed. Juliette sat inside her hidey hole, her two front legs poking out. Then the shadow came, except it didn’t cover the whole screen as it had with Freda’s. Blackened into a silhouette by Juliette’s warming light was the shape of a head and shoulders.

  “Come on, my pretty…”

  And whoever had said that lifted his arm—lifted the Formica panel above Juliette’s enclosure. Opened the lid of the glass terrarium. Reached inside with a gloved hand and tugged at her front leg. Brought her out of her safe haven. He let her go, and Juliette raised both front legs, clearly showing she wasn’t happy.

  “Now, now,” the man said. “No need to be nasty about it.”

  What the fucking hell…?

  Robin’s stomach didn’t feel too good. His muscles clenched painfully again, and anxiety roiled in the centre of his chest. A feeling of utter dread seeped into him, and he wanted to turn away but at the same time keep watching.

  The man hovered his hand over Juliette and clawed his fingers and thumb, but she reared up on her four back legs. “Oh, you’re going to be awkward, are you?” His voice was soft, similar to a coaxing father or teacher. “Then I’ll choose another. You could have been famous, you know, but now you won’t be. It’s the principle of the thing. You didn’t behave the way you should. No hard feelings, eh?”

  He stepped to the left, out of view. Juliette remained standing on her back legs, static, possibly ready to pounce if he bothered her again. So the first shadow Robin had seen on Harry’s footage, the ‘corner’, had been the man’s elbow and arm as he’d tried to take Juliette out.

  “Back to Harry’s, quick,” Nathan said. “Shift forward on it.”

  Robin did so, and sure enough, the man had moved across to Harry, his back blacking out the screen. Without waiting for instruction, Robin opened up the file that showed that whole wall of the arachnid room, all of the tarantula enclosures in front of the camera, twenty-four lit boxes surrounded by darkness. He found the correct time then hit the play icon.

  An odd sound clattered from the speakers, then the shadow man arrived from the right, which didn’t make a damn bit of sense seeing as the entry door to the room was on the left. Robin watched transfixed as the man went to Juliette’s enclosure, tried to get her out, then moved to Harry’s glass house. He picked Harry up with no problem at all and turned to the side to place him in what Robin thought might be some kind of fabric bag. Not good. Harry would hate that and become agitated.

  “There. Good boy,” the man said. “It’s your turn under a different spotlight.”

  He knelt and took a larger bag off his back, placed it on the floor, then lowered the smaller bag with Harry in it inside. Calm as you like, as though he had all the time in the world, he zipped it up, returned it to his back, then moved off to the right.

  “We need to look at the right-hand wall, where the smaller spiders are,” Robin said.

  Nathan paced. “This is insane. Some bloke has come in here and stolen a bloody arachnid. What. The. Fuck?”

  “Seems that way. And I didn’t recognise his voice, did you?” Robin found the correct time then hit play.

  “No. But then why would a zoo employee want to nick a tarantula? And we don’t know everyone who works here, anyway, so we wouldn’t necessarily recognise voices.”

  “Shh. Here we go.”

  Nathan came to stand behind him, and Robin stared at the bank of smaller spider cases, twelve in a row containing species from Australia and Northern America. Above and below them were posters and information for visitors, faint in the darkness, but during the day they were lit by overhead lights in brass casings.

  Robin just made out a pair of feet appearing in the gloom at the top of the screen, in the centre.

  Oh my God.

  Then legs, a torso, and the shadow man dropped down to the floor with that weird clatter Robin had heard on the other file. From there, the intruder moved out of sight, making for the tarantula wall.

  “He seems to know exactly where he’s going.” Hitting pause, Robin swivelled the desk chair around so he faced Nathan, who was pacing again.

  “Mr Clarke is going to go mental,” Nathan said.

  “I know, but it’s not like it’s our fault, is it? We’ve done everything we can for now. At least Harry isn’t loose—that’s one small mercy—but I’m worried about him. I mean, does that bloke want him for a pet or what? Will he look after him properly?”

  “No idea. I’ll give Mr Clarke a ring. Then it’s just steeling ourselves for the inevitable shitstorm, I suppose.”

  Robin rubbed a hand over his face then cradled his chin in the curve between finger and thumb. “I’m amazed someone could break into the zoo without any alarms going off, to be honest.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a job for the police to deal with.” Nathan picked up the phone from its dock on the desk and pushed the speed dial button for the direct extension to Mr Clarke’s mobile. “If he’s out having a rant with the elephants, there’s no point calling his office. Ah, hello, Mr Clarke? It’s Nathan from Amazing Arachnids. Um, we have a problem… Um…yeah, well… I don’t want to sound rude, but I think it’s more important than the elephants at the moment. Pardon? Oh. Yes. Right.” Nathan widened his eyes at Robin. “I appreciate that, sir, but someone’s been in here during the night and stolen Harry. We checked the camera footage, and he broke in. Came in from the roof by the looks of it. Okay. Yep. Right. Will do.”

  Nathan replaced the phone in its dock and shook his head.

  “Bein
g his usual dickhead self, was he?” Robin asked.

  “Of course he was. Didn’t want to know at first. Said I was wasting his valuable time.”

  “Until you said what was wrong.”

  “Yep. Now he’s crapping himself and coming over here.”

  “Brilliant. Well, brace yourself for that shitstorm, then.” Robin leant his head back against the chair and closed his eyes for a second. “I knew I should have rung in sick this morning.”

  Chapter One

  Nine a.m., and Burgess stood at the mouth of the alley, cursing the bloody cold weather. Hands deep in his coat pockets, he contemplated the task ahead, his breath chundering out in staccato grey puffs. It wasn’t every morning he was called out to take a look at a body—dumped during the night, most likely—but it was something he wished he wasn’t doing. Still, the poor woman sprawled out naked a few yards ahead beneath a white forensics tent had been discovered by a rubbish collector about an hour ago. It wasn’t her fault the call had come in to Burgess.

  I expect Shaw was called, too, and he ignored it like he’s ignored me. Fucker.

  He sighed, not wanting to go inside the tent yet, thinking to wait for the on-scene pathologist to finish her assessment. Marla was a decent sort, lovely woman, single, so people thought, although he knew better. She was a good friend of his and told him some of her secrets. Like the fact she was shagging the DCI.

  Large industrial floor-standing torches lit the scene. So early on a winter morning meant piss-poor visibility in a narrow alley like this, and with the storm clouds sluggishly drifting, it was darker than usual. Uneven rectangular cobblestones glittered with a thick frost except where footprints marred them and the heat from the torchlights had burned it away. Two wheelie bins stood against the right-hand wall next to the tent, black bags bulging out of one of them. A stack of cardboard crates with pictures of fruit on their sides looked about to topple over, undoubtedly put out by the grocer from the row of shops in the street behind Burgess. The scent of washing drifted by—Letty’s Launderette was already open for business then.