Dead Scared

‘WE NEED YOU to wake up now, big fella. Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?’

The light was hurting Joesbury’s eyes. He really didn’t want to open them.

‘You’re in hospital, love. The Lister in Stevenage. You were involved in a car accident. Do you remember anything about it?’

‘Rita, we’ve just heard that the car is owned by a haulage company in Dagenham. The registered keeper is a Michael Jackson.’

‘Really?’

‘That’s what they told me.’

‘Mr Jackson? Michael? Is that your name?’

‘Mick,’ managed Joesbury. ‘And when people start humming “Billie Jean” at me I usually thump ’em. Will I live?’

I went for the closest window. There was nowhere in this room I could hide and if the window didn’t open it was all over. I could hear more than one set of footsteps below and the occasional word being exchanged. They weren’t exactly making a row but they weren’t trying to be silent either. That could mean they didn’t know I was in here. It could also mean they knew I couldn’t escape.

If I thought about that, I’d lose my head completely, so I jumped on to the desk and ducked beneath the blind. Opened, the window would tilt to a horizontal position, allowing plenty of space for me to climb out. Trouble was, it had a lockable catch on the frame and no key in sight. From the bottom of the steps, I could hear someone speaking quietly. I had about ten seconds.

I made sure the key wasn’t hung from or taped to the window frame, then shimmied along the desk to the next window. Footsteps on the top two steps. No sign of the key on the second or the third window and I had about a second left. The door handle twitched beneath the pressure of someone’s hand.

Half my attention was looking round for a weapon, the other half gave one last glance to the fourth window. The key was there, sellotaped to the wall.

The door handle hadn’t moved again and whoever was on the other side of it was talking to someone below. I peeled the tape from the wall and freed the key.

The handle was pushed to vertical and the door began to open as I put the tiny gold key into the window lock and turned. Cold air rushed inside. No point being silent any more. I swung myself out as a man’s voice cried out, ‘Shit!’

Had I been at the first window, he’d probably have caught me. As it was, he grabbed my wrist but didn’t get a firm enough grip to hold on when my full weight and the force of gravity were against him. For a second I hung there, looking into a face I knew.

Tom, the maintenance man with kind eyes and broad shoulders, who’d carried my bags the day I’d arrived, who’d fixed my burst pipes, who had access to my room, probably to every student room in Cambridge, any time he liked. Tom. Thomas? As my eyes opened wide with shock, his narrowed in amusement. Then I slid through his hand and landed hard, but unhurt, on the snow.

Without looking up I set off. A second later a thump told me Tom had leaped from the window too. I ran on, head down, arms pumping, a twitch in my ankle telling me that dropping from a height hadn’t been entirely without consequences, but knowing that if I could reach the main road through the estate, there’d be units with people in them.

Thirty yards ahead was a delivery van. The driver was standing outside the nearby unit, looking down at paperwork. Hearing heavy breathing behind, I reached the van and jumped inside, pulling the door shut and pressing down the lock.

I’d meant only to lock myself in for long enough to call for help. I hadn’t thought about whether the keys would be in the ignition. They were. Without stopping to think about whether it was a good idea, because nothing I’d done so far that day was, I switched on the engine, released the handbrake and pressed the accelerator just as Tom pulled open the tailgate and the driver himself grasped hold of the driver’s door.

I pulled away, determined not to give my pursuer a chance to climb in the back. In the rear-view mirror I saw the driver gazing after me in disbelief. Tom was already running back towards Unit 33 and, by the front door, I could see Scott Thornton.

I pulled out on to the main road and turned in the direction of my car.

Over a hundred and seventy-five miles away, the Triumph motor-bike growled its last and fell silent, like a large jungle cat settling down for a nap. The rider, a tall man, switched off the engine, kicked down the stabilizers and climbed off.

All light seemed to have fled the day and the rain to have increased in intensity as he walked up the path to the house. It was cold, hard-as-nails, northern rain, just a fraction more liquid than hail. As the rider turned the key in his front door, he could hear the phone ringing in the hall. He stepped inside, pulled off his helmet, scratched short, honey-blond curls and picked up the receiver.

‘Harry Laycock,’ he said. Bloody hell, it was wet. He’d only been inside five seconds and he was standing in a puddle.

‘Harry? Is that you, Harry?’

‘Last time I checked,’ he replied, pressing the receiver against one shoulder as he tried to shrug himself out of his wet jacket. A stream of rain ran down his neck. From the back of the house appeared the large ginger cat that had adopted him just over a year ago and that he’d given up mistreating in the hope it would eventually go away. ‘What’s up, Alice?’

‘And you’re OK?’

The cat inserted itself between his legs, either not minding or not noticing that they were encased in wet leather. ‘Freezing cold, wetter than an otter and in serious need of something I’ve given up for the entire month of January,’ Harry replied. ‘Otherwise, not so bad.’

‘Jeez, what the hell is going on?’ said Alice, as though talking to herself now, or to someone in the room with her.

Harry got one arm free and transferred the phone. ‘Well, why don’t you tell me?’ he said, as his wet jacket landed on the cat. His friend Alice was American, a little more given to wearing her heart on her sleeve than most of his British mates, but it was a long time since he’d heard her this agitated. ‘Are the family OK?’ he asked quickly, to quell his own sense of unease.

‘They’re fine. Harry, have you heard from Evi?’

And there it was, all it took to remind him that a piece of him was missing.

‘I never hear from Evi,’ he said. The cat slipped out from beneath the wet leather, gave him a look of disdain and stepped daintily down the hall.

‘She emailed me a couple of hours ago,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve been calling you ever since. Her too, and neither one of you has been answering.’

‘Is she OK?’

‘I’m going to forward it on to you. Switch your computer on. You need to look at it right away. Something is very wrong.’

Officially, a snuff movie is defined as visually recorded and commercially distributed material, primarily for the purpose of sexual gratification, in which a principal character is genuinely killed. The subject had come up as part of a course I’d done at police training college, on illegal images and video material. I’d even seen short extracts of films purporting to be snuff. Cannibal Holocaust was one I remembered. The Flower of Flesh and Blood was another. Towards the end of the session, when even the blokes had been feeling queasy, we’d been told they were fake.

The sergeant running our course had been very clear. Snuff movies are an urban myth, he’d said, and not a single known film has ever been proved to be genuine. We’d nodded wisely. It was obvious when you thought about it. The special-effects capabilities accessible to film-makers these days, even to amateur ones, have rendered real violence redundant.

Whilst huge sums of money can be made from extreme pornography, our sergeant had insisted, people who make and distribute such material are businessmen, running professional, if unsavoury, operations. They would not take the risk of committing murder just to make a film.

‘What about child pornography?’ a fellow student had asked. ‘The penalties for that are pretty severe, but people continue to make it.’

‘Harder to fake,’ had been the reply. ‘You can fake a sadistic murder, you can’t fake a kid.’

So, the official line from police authorities the world over is that snuff movies are the cinematic bogeymen. A scary idea, nothing more. They don’t exist.

As I drove my stolen vehicle back towards my own car, I had a feeling that that theory was about to be challenged. What I’d just seen in Unit 33 was a commercial operation, no doubt about it. There were facilities there to make thousands of copies of their films. Thousands more would be distributed online through untraceable accounts.

I had no idea of the size of the market for illegal porn, but given that the legal variety produced on the outskirts of Hollywood nets its producers several billion dollars a year, I figured it had to be pretty sizeable.

I swapped the van for my car and drove away quickly, trying to call Joesbury as I headed back to town. An anonymous voice invited me to leave a message and I suggested he call Laura urgently. Back on the outskirts of town, I pulled off the road to think.

Evi’s beautiful Queen Anne house was a university-owned building. Tom would be able to get in. When she’d asked to have her locks changed, he’d probably been the one who’d done it. When she’d had her tank checked after the blood-bath incident, Tom could have been the one who’d gone there. Every time she tried to make her home safe from stalkers, the stalker himself was one step ahead of her. I dialled in turn every number she’d given me. Home, office and mobile. She wasn’t answering any of them and that didn’t feel good. I needed to find her.

Before anything else, though, it was time I took out a small insurance policy.

I fished a notebook out of the glove compartment (never met a copper yet who didn’t travel with one of those things) and jotted down notes of where I’d been the last couple of hours and what I’d seen. I folded the note and pushed it into the crease of the driver’s seat.

If anything happened to me, my car would be searched by expert crime scene investigators. They’d find the note in minutes. Whether it would be admissible as evidence was a moot point – I’d been in the warehouse illegally – but they would know what I knew.

I was just about to set off again when my phone rang. Thank God. I grabbed it so quickly I almost dropped it.

‘Laura, it’s Nick Bell.’

All air seemed to have been sucked from the car. Bell could not have this number. The phone was new and I hadn’t given the number to anyone. Only Joesbury knew it.

‘Hi,’ I managed.

‘What’re you up to?’ he said, and he sounded so normal that for a second everything that had just happened seemed unreal.

‘Been out for a run,’ I told him. ‘Just heading back now.’

‘Any chance of you coming by?’

‘You’re at home?’ I glanced at my watch. Just after one o’clock.

‘Vet’s coming out to see Shadowfax,’ he told me, and he sounded like he was stifling a yawn. ‘He’s had me up half the night. I have to be around to suck my teeth and look horrified when I’m presented with the bill. Thing is, I’ve got something for you.’

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘Bryony left you a note. It fell under her bed. Your nutty room-mate found it this morning when she went to the hospital to pick up some books. She asked if I could pass it on. Seemed to think I’d be likely to see you before she did.’

Bryony had left me a note. Or had she? No way of knowing. What the hell did I do?

‘To be honest,’ Nick was saying, ‘I rather jumped at the excuse to call you. It’s been a tough couple of days.’

Tell me about it. ‘I’ve got a couple of calls to make. Let me get back to you in five minutes.’

As soon as the line disconnected, I tried Joesbury again. Come on, come on. An anonymous voice told me to leave a message. I told it to have him call me immediately.

Shit, shit, shit. Well, no way was I going to Bell’s house. I wouldn’t even call him back. Evi’s then.

I’d just started the engine when a text came in. Well, speak of the devil.

Can’t talk right now, Flint. What’s up?

What was bloody up? My fingers wouldn’t move fast enough.

Snuff movies is what’s up. Unit 33, Bell Foundries Industrial Estate. Nick Bell has this number. He wants me to go to his house now. I’m heading to Evi’s instead.

I pressed Send. Waited. Had no idea how fast Joesbury could type. Quite fast, it turned out.

Bell’s kosher, Flint. Been working with us. On my way to his place myself, with the boys. Meet you there in 15.