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  I thought I’d quickly scribble a few words down before going in to see her. She was being noisy when she heard me arrive home, so I now I have to teach her a lesson with the needle.

  Back in a minute…

  I taught her that lesson all right. That calling out doesn’t get you anywhere.

  She’s gone quiet now. Good girl.

  * * * *

  David opened the bedroom door and peered around it. Cheryl was where he’d left her, on the mattress. She’d messed the sheets instead of getting up to use the baby’s potty in the corner. That wasn’t very nice. He’d have to clean them now.

  Or maybe he ought to make her do it. Perhaps she wouldn’t shit the bed again then.

  “Get up,” he said, his words muffled behind the latex. Sweat beaded above his upper lip, and he got a shiver of pleasure down his back from it.

  She lifted the top half of her body and stared at him, seemingly uncomprehending. Was she thick? He didn’t think she should be, being a newspaper secretary. She ought to know a thing or two, know her onions, as people were fond of saying.

  An annoying phrase, that.

  “I said, get up!”

  He sounded menacing, and it gave him a thrill to watch her scrabbling to her feet, unsteady where she’d been sleeping on and off. That medicine he got from the bloke down The Stick was brilliant. Made a person off their face. It was wearing off now, what with her calling out the way she had, and she was due another dose. But first she needed to clean that bedding.

  “Now pick up those sheets and come with me. Make sure you fold them around your mess. I don’t want any of it dropping on my floors.”

  He left the room, waiting for her in the hallway. It struck him that if she’d shit the bed she’d also crapped in her clothes. He had nothing here for her except what the other girls used to wear. Those would have to do, or she could go naked. Whatever.

  She came to stand beside him, and he turned his nose up. She didn’t smell too wonderful.

  “You need to have a bath. You can put the sheets in there with you. They’ll need bleaching, and so do you. Bleach is such a fine cleaner, you know. It’ll scour any impurities from your skin. Might burn a bit, but if it burns then you know it’s working. The bathroom is this door here.” He walked to it and pointed. “You have ten minutes. I’ll be standing outside. It’s pointless to check whether you can escape from the window because we’re several floors up. Plus”—he’d said that last word in a growl—“I’ve locked it, so again, pointless. Just have your bath, and I’ll come and get you when your time is up. Three, two, one— Go!”

  He flung the door open and pushed her inside. She staggered forward into the cistern, banging her hip on it. A corner of the sheet dangled in the toilet.

  “Look at what you’re doing, Cheryl,” he said, nodding at the loo.

  She glanced at it.

  He glanced at his watch.

  “Nine minutes left. Get on with it.” He shut the door and stood in front of it, spreading his legs and folding his hands over his chest. He felt like a god, all powerful, and smiled, his cheeks bunching, the skin there touching the underside of the mask. It was slippery from condensation.

  Nine minutes was a long time when you were waiting. It dragged by, and David almost went in there when she still had fifty-two seconds to go.

  Mr Clever said, “Don’t you think it odd that there’ve been no splashing sounds?”

  David frowned.

  “Don’t you worry that she has a sheet in there, one long enough to hang herself with?”

  David cleared his throat.

  “Don’t you wonder whether she didn’t run a bath at all and has stuffed that sheet down her throat in the hopes she suffocates herself?”

  David looked at his watch again. Time to go into the bathroom. Mr Clever had worried him, though. There hadn’t been any sounds of water running. Had he zoned out again and just hadn’t heard it? She might have killed herself. She might be behind the door, waiting for him to enter. He pondered on how he should deal with this.

  He yanked down the door handle and stared at her on the floor beside the toilet, intending to give her more than a piece of his mind—the whole damn chunk of it was ready and waiting on the tip of his tongue, the words it held ready to spill.

  Cheryl was asleep, her face pressed against the pedestal, the sheet clutched in both hands and drawn up in a bunch beneath her chin. The stench was evil, what with the bathroom being small and the window closed. He sighed, bent down to take the sheet away, to peel her disgusting clothes off and put them in the wash. The machine would do the business on a ninety-degree cycle, but he couldn’t fit her in there, too.

  Asleep or not, she needed that bleach bath.

  Chapter Four

  Langham was in his office, going over the missing women’s files. Eleven-fifty in the bloody morning, and he was flicking one page after the other, seeing nothing he hadn’t seen before, nothing that would help him out. He was antsy, pissed off that they were dealing with someone so cunning. It wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with men like this, not by a long shot, but by now, after so many women had been found, something usually stood out, helping them break the case.

  He ran everything through his head, the gnawed end of a biro between his teeth. All right, the killer had stuck to the same methods so far, abducting, keeping them from two to six days, drugging then dumping. Why had he kept some longer than others? Langham scoured the dates to check whether a pattern cropped up, but he just couldn’t see anything of importance there.

  “Get a fucking grip.” He stabbed at the desk blotter with the pen nib. “Think. Go through it.” He took a sip of tea and grimaced. “No bloody good. Can’t think with cold tea.”

  He left his office, walking down the hospital-like corridor past the vending machine, resisting the urge to buy a packet of crisps and a bar of chocolate. Maybe a can of Coke. At the end, he leant on the wall and stared into the main working area, satisfied the others were actually doing their jobs and not piss-arsing about. Heads were bent, fingers tapping on keyboards, hands lifting coffees to lips.

  “They’re dumped on weekdays,” he murmured, pushing off the wall and going into the small kitchen. “So it looks like weekends mean something. Like he works them. Probably lives alone or is keeping them in another location other than his home.” He filled the kettle and put it on to boil. There was coffee in the percolator, but it’d already be stewed by now, not something he fancied on an empty belly. That stuff had the ability to melt his stomach lining.

  He propped his elbows on the worktop and held his forehead in his hands. Glared at breadcrumbs. The casing of a straw from one of those Ribena cartons. The empty packet of sugar—Starbucks, whose wages ran to bloody Starbucks?—a splatter of coffee marring one corner, drying the paper and the sugar inside into a crinkled clump.

  The kettle snapped off, the riotous bubble of the water drawing him back to the reason he was in here. Billows of steam huffed out of the spout, and he lost himself in the inane act of making tea. He stared at the cup as he squeezed the teabag, seeing it but not, going through the motions but hardly aware he was doing them. It helped him to think, staring—something Oliver had got the wrong end of the stick about when they’d worked the Sugar Strands case.

  Tea made, he returned to his office, pushing the door open then going inside, taking a sip at the same time. Hot. Lovely.

  Oliver sat in Langham’s chair, his feet propped up on the desk, as usual, files pushed aside like so much refuse—as usual.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Langham glanced at the wall clock. “Nothing interesting going on at the newspaper? No tea to make for the editor?” He walked over to him. “Shift your arse. Get your own seat.”

  Oliver rose then walked to the one opposite. He plopped down and gave Langham one of those looks—the kind that said he’d received information. Relieved but feeling guilty for it, Langham sat and leant back. Whether it was data for the missing women c
ase or something entirely different, it didn’t matter. So long as a case got solved with Oliver’s help, that’d be all right with him.

  “What have you got?” He studied Oliver’s face for signs he’d seen something horrific.

  “Cheryl Witherspoon.” Oliver clamped his jaw, the muscles there undulating beneath the skin.

  She clearly meant something to Oliver, what with that flickering tic on his cheek, but Langham had never heard of her. Not that he could remember anyway.

  “Who?” Langham swivelled his seat and opened a desk drawer, pulled out a packet of biscuits, then put them on the desk, wincing—crumbs scuttled out and spread far and wide, one of them getting stuck in a groove in the wood next to a small outcrop of dust. “Want one?” He took one for himself, examining it for foreign matter, fluff and whatnot from the drawer.

  “No, I don’t.” Oliver was pale. Eyes hooded. Jaw muscles still flickering.

  Not good.

  “She wasn’t at work again today.” Oliver shook his head. “I didn’t think anything of it. She’s pulled sickies before if she’s tired from working two jobs.”

  “Aww, fuck.” Langham sighed, the name glaring bright-pink neon in his head now. “Not Cheryl from your office?”

  “Yep.” Oliver scooted forward and rested his forearms on the desk.

  Langham put his biscuit back down. “Dead or alive?”

  Oliver stared at the crumbs. “Alive when she spoke to me. Now? Fuck knows. No contact for an hour. She was…she was having a bath.”

  Langham picked up the biscuit again, bit off a chunk, and chewed. At times like this, it was better to let Oliver get it all out. Difficult, though, for Langham to keep quiet, to not push for information. When people contacted Oliver while Langham was there, Christ, it was hard to keep his mouth shut and wait for Oliver to repeat what he’d been told.

  Oliver blinked, attention still on the crumbs. He seemed lost elsewhere, seeing something other than those crumbs. “Being bathed.”

  A frisson of unease sneaked up Langham’s spine. Something was off here. Being bathed meant—

  “Bathed by that man,” Oliver said.

  Shit. He’d known they had a whacko on their hands, but Christ, if that killer was washing them…

  Oliver cleared his throat. “The man who…”

  The man who’s taking the women.

  “In bleach,” Oliver said.

  “What the fuck?” Langham blurted, dropping the last bite of biscuit. “Jesus fuck— Sorry. Sorry. Go on.” He resisted asking questions. Where is she? What does he look like? When was she taken? How long ago was she taken? Has he treated her okay? He almost laughed at that. Bathing her in bleach was a good indication the man wasn’t right in the head.

  “It stinks—of two things,” Oliver said. “The bleach is strong—I’d say he uses the undiluted kind, you know, the thick stuff, and lots of it. Plus, she shit herself.”

  “I’m sure any woman would be frightened.”

  “No, she literally shit herself,” Oliver said.

  “Oh. Fuck.”

  “That’s why she was in the bath. He took her from the Morrisons field—she can’t remember when, said time has skewed—and killed her dog then forced her into his car. She can’t recall what type, just that it’s brown.”

  Things were making sense. He’d wondered where some of the dogs had gone from the previous cases. The man clearly liked the idea of getting rid of two bodies, one with skin, the other with fur. Did that have some significance? Did the woman have to have a dog with them in order for him to approach them? If that were true, that was something, at least. Women who didn’t walk dogs were safe, but he couldn’t totally rule out that they weren’t until he had more information. Besides, he was wrong there. One of the earlier women hadn’t owned one.

  Before he could stop himself, Langham said, “What does he look like? Where did he take her?”

  “She doesn’t know. He drugged her. She wasn’t with it for the whole journey, mainly spent it with her eyes closed. She’d tried to work out where he was taking her by judging the turns he took, but she spaced out and lost track. As for what he looks like… He wore a mask. One of those latex things. Dark peach with wrinkles all over it, except the cheeks are smooth. She remembered thinking that was weird. It’s got holes, so she could see his eyes. Green.”

  “A mouth hole?” Langham sipped his tea, trying not to lean forward, invade Oliver’s space, put pressure on him.

  “Yeah, like a scream, like someone’s screaming. Wonky.” Oliver closed his eyes.

  Langham held his breath, waiting for the images to fill Oliver’s mind. That was a recent development, Oliver being able to see—or rather, know things. He’d said it was like an information dump, data swooping into his head so he just knew, as though someone had told him.

  Oliver shuddered. “Shit, it isn’t nice. The eyeholes sort of droop down, like one of those Hush Puppy dogs, and the mouth is the same, except it’s a sideways version. He has pink lips, dark pink—no idea whether he wears lipstick or what—and blond stubble, like, a day or two’s worth. Possibly from him being too lazy to shave, but I get the impression he prefers it like that. Makes him feel manly, less of a kid—and that’s a key point. He doesn’t want to feel like a kid.”

  This was good, a major breakthrough. But what did that mean? Were they dealing with a youth? It wasn’t unheard of that teenagers or those just entering manhood killed, but to such a degree… Shit, was it someone who’d just gone out on a whim to murder before he’d nurtured his needs for years like other serials usually did? Or had he been having thoughts of killing like this since he’d been a lad?

  “He’s…young,” Oliver said. “I get the sense he’s no more than twenty-five.”

  “Jesus,” Langham breathed.

  To find out a serial killer was so adept at that age was frightening. If they never found him, if he continued on this path, the man would grow in confidence and his acts might become unparalleled by the time he hit forty. A force to be reckoned with.

  A force Langham intended to stop before it got any stronger.

  “So, like I said,” Oliver went on, “he jabbed her with something sharp, and it made her woozy. Got to rewind a second… He injected her at the bloody dog field. She couldn’t walk. He dragged her through the forest to his car—he parks it on the other side of the woods—and shoved her on the back seat. She wanted to call out but couldn’t speak, like her mouth wasn’t working properly. She couldn’t get up, couldn’t move.”

  Langham gritted his teeth. A sharp pain shot up into his head, so he relaxed his jaw. Took another sip of tea while jotting down notes. So this man had access to drugs, needles. Was he a doctor? Langham wrote down that he’d need to take a look at how long it took for someone to become a doctor, what the youngest age was. Or was he an assistant, some bloke who worked in a GP’s office or hospital?

  Oliver sniffed. “She wasn’t sure how long they’d travelled, she lost track of where they might be going, and by the time they arrived at his place, she couldn’t open her eyes. I get the feeling like they were glued shut, but they weren’t. It was just the drug doing its thing. He got her out of the car, put her over his shoulder.”

  So he had no restrictions? He could just take people to his place without worrying someone might see? Did he live out in the countryside then? Somewhere like Dorton, a sleepy village where no one saw much after nine o’clock because they were sequestered behind their closed curtains, sitting on sofas, too engrossed in what was on TV for them to see anything else? Langham noted that down. So many bloody questions, the answers remaining elusive. Fuck, he needed more.

  “And then?” Langham prompted quietly.

  “She remembered the sound of his feet and the feeling of going upwards, up some stairs—lots of stairs.”

  A flat. So not somewhere like Dorton then. Who the fuck has the balls to cart someone into a flat?

  He thought about those in the city—too many of them to count.
Shit, he had a hard task ahead trying to narrow the possible locations down.

  Oliver continued, “She’s slept on and off since. Then she woke needing the toilet. She shit and pissed herself. After that, he told her to have a bath, said if she thought about escaping, it’d be pointless because they were several floors up.”

  Damn excellent information.

  “She fell asleep in the bathroom, and when she woke up, she was naked, in the bath, and he was…he was washing her. I can see him doing it—well, just his hand. Freckles on the fingers, hairs on the arms stopping at the wrist—and it doesn’t look or feel to me like he gets off on that. She doesn’t interest him sexually. She’s just someone he needs to wash, make sense?” Oliver rested his cheek on his hand, eyes still closed.

  Yeah, that made sense. The previous women hadn’t been sexually molested. They hadn’t struggled during an attack. No scratches or bruises on their bodies, other than on one woman, and that bruise had been old, yellowed from the passage of time. She hadn’t been missing long—what was her name again?—so she’d hurt herself before she’d been abducted. Their fingernails had been pristine. None of the victims had fibres of any kind on them. If they’d had any prior to being dumped, the stream had merrily jostled along and swept them away.

  Oliver’s breathing grew heavier.

  “Don’t fall asleep,” Langham said. “Try for more. If you can’t see more, feel more, try and think if she told you anything else.”

  “She…she said he’s soft-spoken, like his voice is a woman’s.”

  Oh, dear Christ. An out and out nutter.

  “Calls her a good girl. Strokes her cheek. A lot.” Oliver sighed, the exhalation rippling as he shuddered. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.” He sat up, bleary-eyed, then stood. “I need a damn Coke.”