Dead Scared

SMUGGLING A LARGE, over-excited dog into a college bedroom wasn’t the easiest challenge of my career but I managed it. I bumped into three boys at the foot of the stairs but none of them looked sober. ‘Mascot,’ I said to them, when they stared at the dog. None of them thought of an answer in the time it took us to run up the stairs and disappear along the top corridor.

Joesbury, it went without saying, would be livid if he knew what I’d done. He’d argue that drawing attention to myself without good reason was stupidly compromising my cover. I could always counter, of course, that students were known for doing daft things, and if anything it could even cement my cover. Whatever, I really didn’t care. I just didn’t want the dog to be shot. The following morning, I’d report it to the dog warden and drop it off at the local dog rescue centre.

Talaith wasn’t in our room, no surprise there, and the dog spent ten minutes exploring the various smells before turning on the spot three times and settling down on the rug in front of my desk. I made myself tea and spent an hour updating Joesbury on everything that had happened that evening and, in particular, my worries about Evi. Then, more because I wanted to show willing than because I believed I’d find anything, I started my daily trawl around the Cambridge websites. Someone called Jessica hadn’t been back to her room for the past two nights and her friends, Belinda and Sarah, were wondering if they should let her tutor know. Otherwise, nothing.

All the time I was working, the dog didn’t once take his soft brown eyes off me, as though he found every movement of my fingers on the keyboard completely fascinating. Oddly, it was comforting to have him there.

When I’d been on every website I knew of, I sat back to think some more about Danielle Brown. As soon as I’d prompted her to use the word scared, it seemed she couldn’t stop. Danielle had spent her last weeks at Cambridge afraid. Scared of failing, she’d told me, of letting down her parents who’d been so proud that she’d got into Cambridge. Scared of not keeping up with the others. Of being proved not good enough. Ironically, it seemed, the more scared she became, the more her work suffered and it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Not really thinking what I was doing, I typed Danielle Brown and Cambridge into Google and pressed Return just to see what would happen. Several references came up, some of which were from newspaper archives I’d seen before. One was about her being part of a winning sailing team in her first year. One reference was on YouTube. Not really expecting anything I clicked on it.

This footage has been removed as it breached YouTube’s publishing code.

Mildly intrigued, I typed Danielle Brown and YouTube into Google and pressed Return again. I found one chat-room discussion, mainly about YouTube’s policy on removing offensive material, with a brief reference to the case of video footage, taken on someone’s mobile phone, of the attempted suicide of Cambridge student Danielle Brown.

Earlier, Joesbury had speculated that Danielle’s suicide might have been a practical joke that went too far. That the kids who’d cut her down and phoned for help might actually have helped string her up in the first place. So had they filmed her dangling before stepping in? I sent another quick email to Joesbury asking him if he was aware that Danielle’s attempted death had been filmed.

At half past midnight I brushed my teeth, took my make-up off and went to bed. Sniffy-Dog followed me into my room, gave everything a good checking out with his nostrils and then settled down on the rug next to the bed. Realizing I was actually quite glad of the company, I let him stay.

Shortly before I dropped off, someone screamed outside. It was followed by giggles, a yell and running footsteps. Youthful high spirits, nothing more, and certainly nothing like the scream I thought I’d heard earlier at Nick’s farm, but it meant that, as I fell asleep, the sound of a woman screaming for help was uppermost in my mind.

Just after one o’clock in the morning, Joesbury walked into his office in Scotland Yard. Not entirely to his surprise, the room wasn’t empty. Two of his colleagues, currently assigned to other cases, worked quietly at their desks, a third was on the phone. His boss, DCI Pete Phillips, whom everyone called PP, but only behind his back, was in his glass-walled room in the corner. He glanced up as Joesbury settled himself at his desk and held up one hand, fingers splayed. He was asking for five minutes. Joesbury opened his laptop.

Four cheerful pings as emails arrived. The first from the accounts department, the second from his younger brother. The third to arrive was from DC Flint. Joesbury clicked it open and blinked at the sheer amount of text in the message. She’d sent it just forty minutes ago, which meant she’d gone straight back to her room and started work on it immediately. He began reading.

The most ordinary of sounds can twist themselves round when they enter your dreams, or so I’m told. Not being a dreamer, I have little experience of such things, but I’ve heard, for example, that the sound of milk bottles being put down gently on a doorstep can, in the dreams of the sleeper upstairs, take the form of bones rattling; that the gentle rat-a-tat of the postman can sound like a troll trying to break its way into the house.

It was the opposite for me that night. The sound I heard in my dream wasn’t threatening. It was quite pleasant in its way, but when I woke and heard it properly I knew immediately it wasn’t raindrops that I could hear running down the window pane. It was fingernails, scratching against the glass.

I lay there, my heartbeat getting faster, telling myself it would be a joke, just another student prank. All I had to do was sit up, open the window and shove the bozo off his ladder.

Except I couldn’t move.

Halfway through Lacey’s account of the academic soirée at that tosser Bell’s country pad, Joesbury’s smile had disappeared. He got up, crossed to the coffee machine and pressed the button for double-strength espresso, knowing she was trying to wind him up and knowing also that it was working.

‘We expected you an hour ago,’ said the boss’s voice behind him.

Joesbury muttered something about an accident on the M1. ‘Car came up zilch,’ he added quickly, referring to the car Lacey’s three assailants had escaped in three nights ago. ‘Registered to a canteen worker in her late fifties. Didn’t even know it had been “borrowed”.’

‘Student prank then?’

‘Almost certainly. Soaking barely clad young women happens a lot, from what I can gather. And they’d never have targeted her this quickly.’

Phillips circled his forefingers on his temples as though easing a nagging headache. ‘Well, it’s a long shot they target her at all,’ he said.

Joesbury said nothing. He’d argued that himself more than once.

The coffee was poured and both men moved away from the machine.

‘You know, guv, if we go public, it ends. Once the authorities and the students themselves know what’s been going on there, it can’t go on.’

‘If we go public, we’ll never catch them. They’ll move to another town and start the whole thing again. There’s too much money involved for them to give up. And that’s not to mention the unholy row we’d have with local CID if we accuse them of missing umpteen unlawful deaths but haven’t a dicky bird to back it up.’

‘Ever occur to you that local CID might be involved?’ said Joesbury. ‘Every so-called suicide neatly wrapped up, all the supporting evidence in place, every box ticked. What are the chances of that in the real world?’

Phillips was silent for a moment. ‘Well, that would widen the goalposts a bit,’ he said.

‘Width of the whole fucking field,’ said Joesbury.

For several minutes I thought my room was darker than usual. Then I realized I just couldn’t open my eyes. A little way to the right of my head, where the window ledge served as a bedside table, I could hear the scratching sound. In my head I could see thin, bony fingers, long, yellow fingernails, the hand clenched like a claw as it was drawn down the glass once more. In reality I could see nothing. My eyes just would not open.

I tried to make a sound. Just the smallest noise in the back of my throat to prove I was still in control of my body. I could hear nothing except the relentless scratching. Then the sound of scratching stopped. It was replaced by that of the window catch being forced from outside. Then that of the window opening.

I could feel cold air on my face, then something else that could have been the curtains being blown against me. Then, worst of all, a creaking of metal, the friction squeak glass makes when it’s touched, then a soft bump. The sounds of something climbing in through the window.

‘I’ll have someone look into it. See if any of the locals have form. Or if any of them are flashing cash around.’

Phillips returned to his office and Joesbury to Flint’s report. Oh, for fuck’s sake, white horses and falcons! Who did the twat think he was? Robin Hood?

Joesbury sighed. It might take him fifteen more minutes to finish the latest episode of War and Peace and type a quick response, and then he could go. He was due to see his son the following day for the first time in three weeks. Spending any time at all with Huck these days was getting increasingly difficult. Which was ironic really, given that his supposed neglect of their child was one of the reasons why his wife had left him.

Joesbury read through to the end and realized he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He highlighted a chunk of text and forwarded it, marked urgent, to his boss. When he saw PP slip his reading glasses on to see the screen, he stood up and crossed the room. He opened the door without being invited in. PP glanced up.

‘She’s getting too close,’ said Joesbury.

No response. PP looked down at the screen again.

‘We should pull her out,’ Joesbury tried.

‘Give me a sec,’ said PP.

Joesbury gave him two. ‘She knows about the video of Danielle Brown on YouTube. She’ll have it figured out in days,’ he said.

‘Days might be all we need,’ PP replied. ‘This Dr Oliver’s a worry, though.’

Joesbury stepped forward and leaned on the desk. ‘Well, exactly,’ he said. ‘I really don’t have a good feeling about these practical jokes and disappearing emails. If Oliver’s getting dodgy emails, someone could have infiltrated her system. If they know she’s been feeding us information, she could be at risk.’

The other man leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his eyes. ‘If someone’s accessing Oliver’s files and if there are emails from Flint among them, the whole op could go belly up.’

‘We should get her out of there.’

Phillips’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who?’ he asked. ‘DC Flint or Dr Oliver?’

‘Both. Dr Oliver can take a couple of weeks off sick. Laura Farrow can quietly disappear.’

PP leaned back in his chair. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Nearly nine months’ work and these two bloody women could blow the whole thing apart.’

‘No disrespect, guv, but I didn’t want to send her there in the first place.’

‘Let me think about it. Go home. I’ll call you in the morning.’

The thing was inches above me, choosing its moment. I couldn’t see it but I knew it was there. Like a bad smell, like the howling in the wind, like the fingertips on the back of your neck, there was no denying it. I reached up, my hand claw-like, scratching and tearing. Except I touched nothing. My hand hadn’t moved from where it lay on the bed. I could not move.

The silence was broken by howling. Howling like wolves, like banshees, like demons. It rang through the night until I thought my head would burst. Then a sound like thunder. Relentless hammering, over and over again. I was lifted up, high into the air, and flung across the room. I landed hard and knew it would hurt if I lived through the next few seconds.

The thing above me lowered its head and I felt hot breath against my face. I knew teeth were a split second away.

‘Tox! Laura! What the hell’s going on?’

Voices I knew. I could see again. The nightmare took a pace back. I was in the study room that Tox and I shared, crouched on all fours like a toddler that had given up on the whole gravity business. The dog, shaking, but holding it together a whole lot better than I, was licking my face. And the hammering of thunder had been the sound of the other girls banging on the door, wondering why on earth they’d been woken by a barking and snarling dog.