Spider's Web (33 page)

There was a click and the cuffs fell open. From the direction of the track came the sound of an engine starting up. Jim quickly removed his mobile phone from his jacket. Then he took the jacket off, bundled it up and pressed it against Reece’s thigh. Reece groaned and looked at him with glassy, fluttering eyes. ‘I had to do it, Jim,’ The words came in a thin whisper. ‘Staci was dying and there was nothing I could do. They contacted me, offered to pay for her treatment.’

‘Who’s “they”?’

Reece gave a weak shake of his head. ‘They’ll let her die if I tell you. I’m sorry, Jim.’

‘It’s OK, Reece. It doesn’t matter now.’ The engine noise was fading into the distance. Jim looked hopefully at his mobile phone. There was no service. He turned to Emily. ‘I’ve got to find some reception and call for help. You need to stay here and keep the pressure on the wound. Do you understand?’

Emily’s eyes were frightened, but she nodded.

In what seemed to Jim like an eerie half-echo of Anna’s parting words, Reece said, ‘Don’t tell Staci what I did.’

Jim looked at his partner with sad, soft eyes. He felt no anger towards him. How could he? Staci was Reece’s love, his reason for living. He’d only done what he had to do, what anyone would have done in the same situation. ‘I’ll be back soon. You just hold on.’

Jim sprinted through the woods. When he reached the track, he checked his phone. The reception bar had jumped up a couple of notches. He dialled and put the phone to his ear. ‘This is DCI Jim Monahan, I have an officer down in need of urgent medical assistance,’ he breathlessly told the dispatcher. For the second time that day he was informed that an air ambulance was on its way. He gave a description of Gavin and his vehicle, before heading back into the trees.

‘Help!’ he heard Emily crying out. ‘Help!’

Ignoring the familiar constricting sensation in his chest, Jim put on an extra burst of speed. When he reached the clearing, Reece’s eyes were closed, his head was sagging to one side and there was a telltale bluish tinge to his lips. Jim felt for a pulse. He couldn’t find one. ‘How long’s he been like this?’

‘I… I’m not sure,’ Emily stammered. ‘Maybe a minute. He seemed OK, but then he just kind of closed his eyes. Is he breathing?’

In answer, Jim manoeuvred Reece flat onto his back. He checked the inside of Reece’s mouth was clear. Lacing his fingers together, he placed the heel of his hand on Reece’s chest and pressed down hard. After thirty compressions, he tilted Reece’s head, pinched his nose and breathed twice into his mouth, watching to make sure his chest inflated. Then he resumed the compressions. Over and over, he continued the cycle. Thirty compressions, two breaths, thirty compressions, two breaths… Reece showed no sign of responding. Sweat glistened on Jim’s face. His breathing was ragged. His heart felt ready to burst.

‘You’re going to have to take over,’ he gasped at Emily. He took hold of the tourniquet and improvised bandage.

Emily began the compressions, looking at Jim as if to say,
Am I doing this right?

‘Harder,’ he said. ‘Keep a steady rate… Now two breaths… That’s it, you’re doing good. Keep going.’

Jim’s eyes anxiously swept the sky. Twilight was seeping in; the ghost of a moon was visible. There was no sign of the air ambulance. And when it arrived, the paramedics were going to need guiding to Reece. Jim unlaced his shoes. With one lace, he secured the torsion stick to Reece’s leg so that the tourniquet couldn’t loosen. With the other, he bound his jacket over the wound. ‘Take a rest,’ he said to Emily.

They were exchanging places for the fifth time when they heard the whoomp-whoomp of rotor blades. ‘I have to fetch the paramedics,’ said Jim.

Emily opened her mouth to say something. But before she could, Jim added, ‘Save your breath for him.’

He kicked off his laceless shoes and, on legs that felt like rubber tubes, ran back into the trees. He’d rather have remained with Reece, but in her obviously drugged state Emily might easily become disorientated in the woods. Besides, although he desperately refused to admit it to himself, he knew in his overstrained heart that it wouldn’t make any difference who stayed or went. The paramedics were too late.

22

A crushing sense of déjà vu weighed on Jim as he sat in the hospital corridor with his head resting in his bloodstained hands. Oh Christ. Dead. Reece was dead. The paramedics had confirmed it at the scene. Margaret was dead. Amy was dead. Everyone he loved or got close to died. It was like he was cursed. He wanted to run out of there and keep running until he found some place where he was absolutely and truly alone, where no one could hurt him and he could hurt no one. But the same feelings that made him want to run, pinned him in place. His fingers dug into his pounding skull as he thought of all the faces, all the grief. If he left now it would all have been for nothing. And anyhow, if he was cursed there was no point running. The only way he knew to break a curse was by destroying those who’d cast it. His mind began to grimly reel off the list of names he felt he’d lived with his entire life – Sebastian Dawson-Cromer, Rupert Hartwell, Andrew Templeton, William Howell, Thomas fucking Villiers—

‘DCI Monahan.’

Jim jerked his head up and found himself looking at a female doctor. ‘How is she?’

‘There are no signs of rape. Apart from some cuts and bruises, she should be fine when the effects of the hallucinogen she’s ingested wear off in a few hours. Right now, though, she’s not making much sense. She keeps going on about a horned man.’

‘If you’d seen what she’s seen that would make perfect sense.’

‘She’s refusing to give us any information about her next of kin. Have you contacted her family?’

‘No, and neither should you. Will you please take me to her?’ Dizziness swirled through Jim as he stood up. He put a hand out to steady himself on the wall.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look it. Your colour’s way off. Before I take you to Emily, I’d like to check your blood pressure.’

Reluctantly, Jim followed the doctor into a curtained cubicle. He perched on a trolley bed as she took his blood pressure. She listened to his heart with a stethoscope and asked him to take several deep breaths. ‘You’re showing signs of arrhythmia and your blood pressure is high. Do you have any history of heart problems?’

‘I had a heart attack last year,’ Jim admitted. ‘But that’s all sorted now. I’m just stressed, that’s all.’

‘Maybe, but if I were you I’d err on the side of caution. My advice is, go home and rest and if your symptoms worsen—’

‘Thanks for your concern, Doctor,’ interrupted Jim. ‘But I really need to speak to Emily right away.’

‘OK. Have it your own way, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

The doctor led Jim to a cubicle where Emily was lying on a bed with a nurse watching over her. The green dress had been replaced by a hospital gown. She looked at Jim with eyes that were still glassy and dilated. Eyes blank with shock and despair. His heart constricted in a different way as he thought of the carefree girl he’d watched laughing with her friends only a day ago. That girl was dead too now.

The doctor pointed to a plastic bag containing the dress. ‘I thought you might need it for evidence.’

Jim nodded his thanks. As the doctor and nurse left the cubicle, Emily asked, ‘Have you caught Gavin?’

‘Not yet,’ said Jim. Seeing fear flash over her face, he added reassuringly, ‘But we will. We found him once and we’ll find him again. It’s only a matter of time.’

‘How
did
you find us?’

‘We tracked Gavin’s phone.’

‘Well, can’t you track it again?’

‘We’re trying, but it seems to be switched off.’

Emily’s eyes faded away from Jim. ‘He could be anywhere,’ she murmured, twitching as though a cold hand had touched her. ‘He could even be in this hospital.’

‘Wherever he is, he won’t get near you again. There’ll be a police guard on you day and night until we catch him.’

‘But what if the guard is one of
them,
like that other policeman?’ She used the word
them
as though she was referring to some invisible, omnipresent group of beings.

‘They won’t be. I’ll make sure of that.’

Emily looked at Jim with the desperate desire to believe what he was saying. ‘Gavin thinks he’s got magic powers or something. He said anything’s possible so long as you believe in the Horned God. Do you think he’s crazy?’

‘I don’t know, but I know he doesn’t have magic powers. He’s just a man. A warped, pathetic man.’

Her features contracted. ‘He’s my dad.’

Jim said nothing. What could you say in the face of such merciless truth?

Emily’s eyes drifted again. She hugged her arms across herself, lips moving as if in silent prayer. Jim waited for her to come back to herself, then said, ‘I know it’s difficult right now, Emily, but I need you to focus and tell me everything that’s happened to you since this morning.’

Emily squeezed her eyes shut with the effort of putting her scrambled thoughts into order. She began with the phone call from Lindsey Allen. Jim took notes as she described how she’d arranged to meet Gavin, the journey to the forest, the hollow tree, the things he’d said about the Horned God, about living in a world where there was no right or wrong. Her voice faltered when she came to the fight between him and Anna. Tears swelled into her eyes. ‘I had his knife in my hand. I could have saved Anna.’

‘You did save her,’ said Jim. ‘She survived.’

The tears spilled over. She wept softly with relief for a few seconds, before wiping her eyes and saying more to herself than Jim, ‘I have an aunt.’

‘And another grandma.’ The DNA test results weren’t in yet, but Jim had no doubt they would back up his words. And he saw how badly Emily needed something – some glimmer of future hope – to hold on to. ‘A grandma who I’m sure will be desperate to meet you. But that’s for another time. Right now we need to concentrate on the task before us.’

Emily continued her story. Jim noted that her voice was perhaps a fraction stronger. Her face hardened into a scowl as she recounted Gavin’s conversation with Ronald and Sharon. ‘How could they lie to me my whole life like that? They’re as bad as Gavin.’

Remembering his promise to Sharon, Jim said, ‘It was your grandma who gave us Gavin’s phone number, without which we wouldn’t have found you.’

Emily digested this information for a moment, before giving a sharp shake of her head, as if to say,
That’s not enough
. Jim didn’t try to convince her otherwise. He understood why Ronald and Sharon had chosen Gavin over the law. Nonetheless, they’d made their choices and they had to live with them, just as he lived with his. His own mind began to drift, returning once again to Amy, to Margaret. Emily yanked him back into the moment as she said, ‘Later, Gavin spoke on the phone to a man.’

‘How much later?’

‘Not long. Maybe ten minutes.’

‘Did the man give a name?’

‘No.’

‘What was his voice like?’

‘It was posh English.’

Posh English.
That described the vast majority of the men in Herbert Winstanley’s black book. ‘Do you think you’d recognise it if you heard it again?’

Emily shrugged. ‘The man said he’d get us out of the country. Gavin wanted to go to the Philippines.’

‘No extradition treaty,’ Jim remarked. ‘What else did he say?’

‘That it would take a day or two to arrange.’

Jim glanced at his watch. It had been roughly two hours since Gavin escaped. Taking into account when the phone call had been made, that meant they had a possible window of forty or so hours to catch him. Then he would be gone, free to continue his depravity in a country beyond their reach.

‘But he won’t go without me,’ continued Emily, her gaze dropping to a red welt where Gavin had bound her wrist to his.

Jim was inclined to agree. He’d seen the longing in Gavin’s eyes as he looked at Emily, he’d heard the want in his voice. ‘Was anything mentioned about how you would travel to the Philippines?’

‘No. That was pretty much the end of the phone call, except for one more thing Gavin said.’

Something in Emily’s voice made Jim look up from his notepad. ‘Which was?’

‘He said that if anything bad happened to him, if he was shot or something like that, information would be sent to the police about some photos and videos.’

Jim’s forehead squeezed into a dark, brooding expression. So Gavin had incriminating evidence that he was using to blackmail those he’d helped acquire victims for. And all it would take for the authorities to get their hands on that evidence was for someone to give the sociopathic little scumbag the justice he deserved. Jim gave an internal shake of his head. No, he couldn’t allow himself to think like that. He’d been down that path before and it had nearly destroyed him. He motioned for Emily to go on with her story.

Rapidly, as though purging the words from her mind, she described what had happened after Gavin released her from inside the sofa. ‘He must be insane,’ she said. ‘Why else would he want to marry his own daughter?’

‘He doesn’t see you as his daughter. At least not in a way you or I would understand. To him you’re just an object. All this crap about the Horned God, that’s simply his way of justifying what he does. Believe me, Emily, I’ve met more of his kind than I ever want to remember. People like him are incapable of love or guilt or telling the truth. They’re hollow inside. Empty.’

Emily touched her chest tentatively, almost as though she was afraid of what it might contain. ‘What makes them like that?’

‘I wish I knew,’ sighed Jim, turning to open the cubicle’s curtain.

‘Where are you going?’ Emily asked anxiously.

Again, a feeling of déjà vu pressed down on Jim. A sense that he’d been here before and would be here again. Like he was a character in a play, doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he assured her. ‘I just need to let the doctor know we’re finished talking.’

‘We’re transferring Emily to a private room on a ward,’ the doctor informed Jim. ‘We’ll keep her in overnight just to be on the safe side.’