The Doll's House

70

Southampton Common looked bleak and sinister under the grey clouds. A suitable place for a killer to roam, DC Lucas thought to herself. She was new to Southampton and still didn’t know it well, so she’d brought as many uniformed officers as she could muster. Good, honest guys who knew every inch of this terrain and could be her guides.

Fanning out, they set about their task, stopping joggers, mums, businessmen, even council workers cutting the grass, asking them what they were up to and who they’d seen on the Common that morning. The vast majority were baffled by the questions, others were taciturn and suspicious, afraid of getting dragged into something that was nothing to do with them. It was an exhausting and potentially fruitless endeavour – so many people used the Common during the course of the working day. But he was here somewhere.

The mobile signals had sprung to life just under forty-five minutes ago. If Lucas hadn’t had to face down DC Sanderson, she would have been here even sooner, but she was still pleased by the speed of their response. She now had six CID officers in addition to herself and fifteen uniformed officers combing every inch of the Common. They might get lucky, they might not. But something in her waters told Lucas that they would be lucky today.

She had ventured off the beaten track now, walking away from the body of the search party into the denser undergrowth near the Wildlife Centre. It was oddly beautiful here, despite the grey sky that framed the woods. The trees were old with characterful hanging branches and thick foliage. And they were full of birds, who called to each other as Lucas picked a careful path deeper into the woods.

Crunch.

Lucas froze, her senses suddenly alert. She cast around her, but couldn’t see anything.

‘Police. Who’s there?’

Still nothing. A silence that seemed to go on for ever, then:

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Where was the sound coming from? She strained hard to hear, but, finding it impossible to locate the cause, made a snap decision and plunged through the foliage to her right.

Suddenly it happened. A figure bolted. The crunch, crunch had obviously been him creeping away, but now he was in full flight. Lucas was after him in a flash, sprinting over the forest floor and hurdling fallen logs in pursuit. Lucas had always been a good sprinter and she needed every ounce of her ability now, as the fugitive darted gracefully under branches and round bushes, intent on escape. He knew the forest far better than her, so while he seemed to glide unimpeded through the woods, Lucas was whipped by thorns and branches, scratching the skin from her face and arms. The trees were thinning now, however, and Lucas spotted her chance.

Cutting off the corner of the wood, she raised her speed a notch further. She was taking a calculated gamble that the man she was chasing would bear left on leaving the sanctuary of the wood, heading for the busy city centre rather than exposing himself to capture on the open ground of the Common.

Sprinting free of the woods, the man turned sharply left and sprinted for the park exit. Wham! Lucas took him down, wrapping her arms round his legs, bringing him down hard on the concrete pathway. She was swiftly up on her feet and pressing him hard up against the park noticeboard. He was already cuffed and compliant by the time the other officers arrived to assist.

Lucas’s pulse was racing, but her triumph was short-lived. The ‘man’ she was chasing turned out to be sixteen years old. A teenager with a taste for soft drugs and two decent-sized baggies of cannabis in his pocket. What he didn’t have, it soon became clear, was any mobile phones.

Cursing, Lucas turned him over to uniform and returned to the hunt. Another twenty minutes had passed and it was clear to her now that unless their killer had a pathological desire to be caught, he would be long gone.