Spider's Web (37 page)

Emily grimaced as if the question pained her. She wanted to say yes, but how could she? It wasn’t only about being afraid. Parties were for normal people. And she wasn’t normal any more. She’d heard people whispering. She’d changed. She was weird. And they were right. She had changed. It wasn’t simply that she’d become distrustful and withdrawn. It was something deeper than that, more permanent. It was as if a door had been blasted open in her mind. A door to some place where everything seemed more distant yet sharper, unreal yet too real, like her nightmares. Sometimes she felt as if she still hadn’t come down from the mushrooms. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever really come down.

‘Everyone’s going to be there,’ persisted Leo.

She shook her head and broke into a run. When she got to the car, she couldn’t bring herself to even say hello to her carer. She had the feeling that if she opened her mouth she would start screaming and crying and wouldn’t be able to stop.

Back at the house, she went straight up to her bedroom and crawled under the duvet fully clothed. She scrolled through her phone’s contacts list to ‘Grandma Fiona’ and pressed dial. Her grandmother picked up after a single ring, as though she’d been expecting the call. ‘Hello, Emily, love.’

Just the sound of her grandmother’s voice soothed away some of the torment. Not nearly all of it, but enough so that she could speak. ‘Hi, Grandma.’

‘You sound tired.’

‘I don’t want to be here. I want to be there with you.’ The words were true – the thought of moving in with her grandma was pretty much the only thing that had kept Emily going the past fortnight – but they weren’t what she truly wanted to say. She feared that if she said what she really wanted to, if she bared what was inside her, then Grandma Fiona wouldn’t want her to come live in Sheffield.

‘And you will be very soon. Anna tells me everything should be sorted in the next few days. A week at the most.’

‘A week,’ murmured Emily. Thinking of a week was like thinking of forever. It made her head reel.

A shout came from downstairs. ‘Tea’s ready, Emily.’

‘I’ve got to go, Grandma.’

‘OK. Speak soon. Bye, love.’

‘Bye.’

Emily went to the top of the stairs and said, ‘I’m not hungry. I’ve got a headache. I think I’m just going to go to bed.’

‘I’ll make you up a plate in case you change your mind,’ came the reply.

Emily lay staring out the window, forehead wrinkled. She was too tired to read, too tired to listen to music, too tired for anything besides sleep. But she didn’t want to sleep, especially not tonight of all nights. As the daylight faded, biting her lips to keep herself awake, she set the alarm on her mobile phone in case sleep ambushed her.
A week.
She wondered if she could survive that long without sleep. And what if she did? Would the dreams stop once she was in Sheffield? Why should they? Gavin would still be out there, as invisible and all-encompassing a presence as the god he worshipped. She cringed as if from an unwanted touch. She felt like crying but didn’t have the energy for it. Her eyes were so heavy, so fucking heavy…

… Darkness. She was running, falling. The goat-man, the fear, the pain. Then her phone was beeping, her eyes were snapping open and she was clutching the duvet to her chest, gasping, sobbing. Fighting to control her breathing, she stared at her phone although she knew the time – half ten. Leo’s party would be in full swing. Again came the question,
Why should I have to live like this?
Again her forehead wrinkled as if she was hesitating at some thought. But the wrinkles fled as an answer rang out like a challenge in her mind.
I shouldn’t. I won’t!

Emily rose from bed and changed into jeans and a hoodie. She brushed her hair and applied thick black eyeliner, then peered out the window. Other than a blonde in a miniskirt and heels, the street was empty. She switched off the light, quietly left the room and closed the door behind her. The sound of the television filtered up from the living room. On soft feet, she descended the stairs and reached for the front door handle. Her hand hesitated, vibrating like a fly caught in a web. The murmur of voices spurred her to action. She slid out into the night. The air was warm, but its touch made her shiver as she hurried away from the house.

‘Where the hell’s she going?’ Jim murmured to himself, following Emily with binoculars. He’d been watching the house and surrounding streets since the previous evening. The house was situated on a quiet road that ran along the bottom of a shallow valley. Its rear garden backed onto that of an identical house. Parallel streets of houses and flats rose steeply in front of it. He’d found a spot several streets away where the house was visible from the flat roof of a three-storey block of flats. He’d checked the roof out cautiously before setting up camp, aware that Gavin might be lurking thereabouts for the same reason as him. There was no sign that anyone had recently been there.

He was too far away, he knew, to react quickly should Gavin attempt to snatch Emily from the house. But he was willing to take that risk so as to remain undetected himself. Besides, even with the plain-clothes officers no longer stationed outside the house, he doubted Gavin would attempt such a thing. The man was too clever, too patient. In the past, he’d spent months grooming victims for himself or others. With Emily, circumstances had forced him to move too quickly. But now he had time to watch and wait for his moment.

Jim had expected that moment to most likely arrive when Emily plucked up the courage to make her own way to school. But he hadn’t expected this. This was simply begging for trouble. He found himself caught between watching her through the binoculars or tailing her. He knew the route she took to school. But he didn’t have a clue where she was going now. If he lost sight of her, he might not be able to find her again.

Emily paused outside the entrance to a park at the end of the road. She glanced around herself as if looking for someone. Even at that distance, Jim could see the nervousness in her movements. ‘What’s she playing at?’ he wondered out loud. As she headed into the park, the ever-present grooves on his forehead deepened. The park was a large expanse of unlit, mostly pathless grass dotted with wooded clumps and enclosed by a thick hedge. Walking through it alone at night wasn’t merely naiveté. It was madness. And yet her movements were deliberate, calculated. Her expression too had suggested she knew exactly what she was doing. It was almost as though she was putting herself out there as bait. He suddenly found himself wondering whether this was part of some police operation to lure Gavin into revealing himself. He scoured the bushes and trees, half expecting to see snipers lurking amongst them. But there were none. He dismissed the idea. Surely Garrett would have told him if such an operation was under way.

He jerked the binoculars back towards the park’s entrance. A woman was standing where Emily had been a moment ago – a long-haired, buxom blonde in a pink jacket, miniskirt and heels. Maybe ten minutes earlier, he’d seen the same woman heading in the opposite direction past Emily’s foster carers’ house. Her heels were so high that she’d walked with a peculiar bandy-legged hobble. Her hair hung in thick curtains, so that all he’d glimpsed of her face was the point of her nose and her chin. She had her back to him now. And he was struck by how broad her shoulders were. How manly…

Jim’s heart was suddenly thumping like an out of control piston. ‘Shit,’ he hissed as the blonde started into the park.

Still clutching the binoculars, he sprinted for the stairwell. He jumped into his car and accelerated hard in the direction of the park. Moments later, he slowed the car softly at its entrance. He peered through the binoculars again. The blonde was maybe a hundred metres away, tottering awkwardly across the grass. Roughly the same distance further on, Emily was visible by the glow of the moon and the city as a vague black shape. Snatching out the Taser, Jim left his car. He angled towards a clump of trees to the right of the blonde. Once he was in amongst them, he quickened his pace, trying to overtake her and get a proper look at her face. But the trees ended before he could do so. A short distance away there was another small thicket. He lost sight of Emily as, ascending a gentle slope, she passed behind it. The blonde made her way up the slope too. He forced himself to wait until she was far enough away that he could follow without being noticed.

He skirted around the upper edge of the thicket, attempting again to get ahead of the blonde. Emily hadn’t emerged into view, suggesting she was walking parallel to the slope in line with the trees. Either that or she’d stopped for some reason. His pulse and feet moved faster at the thought of what that reason might be. When he reached the far end of the thicket, he pressed himself against a tree. Twenty metres or so beyond the trees a fragmentary hedgerow split the park in two. Emily was standing in a gap in the hedge, facing away from him. She had her back to the blonde too. The blonde was moving slowly, warily. Her hand slid into her jacket and withdrew something. And suddenly Jim didn’t need to see her face to know who she really was. The blade glinting in the moonlight told him everything.

He tensed his muscles to move and take the blonde down, but before he could do so two men emerged from the hedge. Jim’s first thought was that he’d been right, there was a covert operation under way. But then he saw the steel baseball bat one of the men was carrying. Baseball bats were hardly police issue weapons. Neither did the men look like police. One was built like a bull, with a bald pear-drop head and a close-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. The other was also bald, but slimmer and clean-shaven with a hard-bitten, broken-nosed face. They were both wearing black leather jackets and blue jeans. Heavy gold rings glimmered on their fingers. And they were smiling. Not friendly smiles.

‘Well hello, darling,’ the bull of a man said to the blonde in a broad Brummie twang, slapping the bat into his meaty palm.

His broken-nosed companion gave a sandpaper laugh. ‘My, my, look at you. What a pretty sight you make.’ He had an identical accent.

The blonde retreated several rapid steps and stumbled on the high heels. The hair fell away from a face almost unrecognisably daubed with crimson lipstick, blusher, mascara and electric-blue eyeshadow. But there was no disguising the eyes. Jim would have recognised Gavin Walsh’s eyes in a room full of nothing but eyes.

Gavin scrambled to regain his balance, jerking up the knife. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ he demanded to know, putting on a high-pitched female voice.

This time both men laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t recognise us,’ said the bull, an expression of mock hurt on his big, grinning face. He pointed to his stomach, then his head. ‘I know we’ve got a bit more down there and a lot less up there, but compared to you I’d say we’re looking pretty fucking good.’

The broken-nosed man jerked his thumb at Emily. ‘Why don’t you ask your daughter what we want? She’s the one who contacted us.’

As if on dramatic cue, Emily wheeled towards Gavin. There was no fear in her eyes. Only hate. ‘I want you dead!’

‘How fucked up is that? Your own daughter wants you dead. And luckily Patrick and me are more than happy to oblige her.’

The realisation hit Jim as to who the men were. The bull was Patrick McLean and the other was Kieran. They were the older brothers of Jody McLean, the girl Gavin had been accused of raping in ’87. They’d been wrongly suspected of murdering him back then. Now they had their chance to do the job for real.

Gavin suddenly kicked off his high heels at the brothers and half turned to run. Kieran whipped out a handgun. ‘Stay where the fuck you are. And drop the blade.’

Gavin stared at the gun a moment, his tongue darting over his crimson lips. Reluctantly, he let the knife fall from his hand. Kieran gestured for him to step away from it. Then Patrick stooped to pick it up. His eyes moved from the glimmering blade to Gavin, hooded with menace. He was no longer smiling. ‘Is this the knife you held to our sister’s throat as you forced your dick inside her?’

Gavin raised his hands, palms outwards. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, still clinging futilely to his put-on voice.

There was a whistle of air as Patrick swung the baseball bat. It connected flush on the side of Gavin’s head with a hollow metallic thud, knocking him off his feet. He rolled several times down the slope, coming to a stop on his back, arms extended upwards to ward off any further blows. Blood ran from beneath his dishevelled wig. Patrick loomed over him, facing away from Jim now. ‘Say that again!’ he exploded. ‘Go on, fucking say it and I’ll open your skull like a coconut.’

‘No,’ Emily put in anxiously. ‘You can’t kill him yet. You promised me you’d find out where she is first.’

Who’s ‘she’?
wondered Jim. He knew the answer even as he asked himself the question. There was only one person
she
could be – Jessica Young.

‘We’re just gonna tenderise him a little bit,’ Kieran assured her. ‘Get him ready for the real fun.’ He gestured towards the park’s entrance. ‘I don’t think you want to hang around and see what happens next.’

Emily was silent a moment. Jim could see her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. ‘Yes,’ she said, almost whispering, ‘I do.’

Kieran gave a shrug as if to say,
Suit yourself.
He followed it with a nod towards his brother. Patrick swung the bat again. ‘Hel—’ Gavin started to cry out, but the word turned into a gasped oomph as the bat slammed into his abdomen. He tried to roll out of reach, but another expertly aimed whack curled him up into a winded ball.

With each successive bone-crunching blow that rained down on Gavin, Jim saw the solution to the case moving closer. He saw himself obtaining the photos and videos. He saw himself putting the cuffs on Villiers. But he saw too the look on Emily’s face. Although her expression was grimly set, her big blue eyes glistened wetly in the moonlight. She flinched every time the bat hit home. She was dying, he knew. Part of her – the innocent, loving, trusting part – was being beaten to death just as surely as Gavin.