‘It’s for a?60 °Compact Disc player. Look at the date. It was delivered to Sorenson over three months ago. It’s still in the box in his house.’ Brook smiled at Rowlands. ‘Remember the VCR we found at Sammy’s.’
‘Yeah.’
‘That was his way in to Sammy’s flat. The CD player’s for the next victims. And we’ve got the serial number. When he leaves it there, we’ve got him.’ Brook couldn’t keep the victorious grin from his features and regretted it at once.
‘You seem keen for The Reaper to kill again, Brooky.’
‘Course I’m not but he will. And when he does…’
‘How did you get hold of this?’
Brook paused and stole a glance at his boss. He hadn’t expected Charlie Rowlands, of all people, to wave the Book at him.
‘During an illegal search,’ he conceded.
‘You’re telling me…’
‘Yes, it’s inadmissible, but if we have The Reaper, when we have him, we’ll get round it. I promise.’
Rowlands sighed. Brook waited but he knew he had him. The longer his boss kept silent the more he was unable to conjure objections.
‘Two weeks, Brooky. Then I’m pulling the plug. That means Amy as well as work. Got it?’
‘Thanks.’
‘Do you need anybody else?’
‘He won’t move unless it’s just me, guv. Don’t ask me to explain it.’
Rowlands got out of the car and turned to Brook as though about to speak. In the end, he shot him a weak smile and closed the door.
Brook watched him hover outside the pub, looking slyly back at the car, so he engrossed himself in tuning the radio to let Rowlands slip in without guilt.
He checked his watch. 2.30. A couple of hours of daylight left. If he went home now, he could take Theresa round the park, give Amy some time off.
He started the car and arrived at Queensdale Road twenty minutes later.
No sooner had he killed the engine and kicked off his shoes, than Sorenson emerged from his house. He brandished an umbrella over his head, though it was barely spitting, and walked the hundred yards to Holland Park Avenue.
Brook knew from painstaking observation that Sorenson travelled everywhere by black cab so he restarted the carand crawled along the kerb after him. Not once did Sorenson look round. He was either oblivious to the way Brook had dogged his steps for so long, or he simply didn’t care.
He climbed into a cab a couple of minutes later and set off to the west towards Shepherd’s Bush Green, Brook in pursuit two cars behind.
The traffic was building and progress was slow. Only a handful of cars were getting through the lights on each cycle and Brook was tempted to get closer, to avoid being left. He resisted. If push came to shove he could always bang on the portable siren to make up ground.
As he feared, Sorenson’s taxi driver scooted through the lights on red and the car in front of Brook pulled to a halt.
Brook slapped the wheel in frustration and was about to reach down for the siren when he noticed the cab pull over on Goldhawk Road and stop.
For a second, Brook thought Sorenson had stopped to be sure Brook didn’t lose him-that really would have been taking the mick-but instead his quarry leapt from the cab and into an adjacent hardware store. The cab’s hazard lights came on. It was waiting for him.
When the lights turned in Brook’s favour, he overtook the stationary cab and parked fifty yards beyond. A moment later, Sorenson emerged with a plastic bag and hopped back into the cab. Brook sank onto his side as the cab pulled round his car and then sat up to continue the pursuit.
Two minutes later, Brook glanced over at the neat park on his left. Ravenscourt Park. In another hundred yards they’d pass Ravenscourt Gardens, the street in which Laura Maples had lived the last part of her brief life and died the first part of her eternal death.
With a surge of panic, Brook realised that’s where Sorenson was going. The knowledge gnawed at him, as surely as the rats had gnawed at young Laura.
Sure enough, the cab pulled into Ravenscourt Gardens and Victor Sorenson stepped out, carrying his plastic bag. Brook waited round the corner giving Sorenson enough time to find the right house. There was no hurry. Brook knew where it was, he could have walked there with his eyes closed. Especially with his eyes closed.
After an appropriate pause, Brook pulled off the main road and walked towards the basement flat where Laura Maples had perished. Nothing had changed much. There were no onlookers being held back now, no flashing lights and no convulsing uniforms. Otherwise it was as he remembered it.
Brook stopped and put his hands on the railings as he had that warm summer night. They were cold to the touch. He gazed down at the yard. It was still full of detritus, most of it saturated into cardboard soup by winter rains. Only the discarded plastic bag was shiny and new. The smell was the same. Decay.
Brook descended into the depths and picked up the bag. Inside were empty packages for a torch and batteries. He dropped it to the ground. Perhaps he could haul in The Reaper for littering with intent to commit serial homicide. Charlie Rowlands had once done something similar to a sneering Yardie, after he’d thrown his McDonalds carton on the floor. ‘If you can’t catch ’em,’ he’d said to Brook, ‘piss ’em off.’
Brook looked at the boarded window and then at the door. The hardboard had gone, replaced by a sheet ofcorrugated iron that had been pulled aside. The stench of urine and faeces still pervaded. For once, Brook hankered after a pull on Rowlands’ flask but had to be content with rapid deep breathing. He tucked his trousers into his socks and then he was in.
It was pitch black so he waited by the entrance to accustom his eyes. If he hadn’t given up smoking for the baby he might have had a box of matches to light his way. It would be a splendid irony if having quit smoking for health reasons, Sorenson crept up on him now and cut his throat.
Eventually Brook felt confident enough to inch toward the feeble glow, emanating from the room in which the girl had died. At the thought of her, he saw again the bloated, blackening corpse of Laura Maples and felt a surge of nausea rising in him.
A noise from the next room distracted him and he pressed on, aware of rustling and nuzzling in nearby rubbish. Grazing rats probably. Brook wasn’t sure he could go any further. He wanted to run back to the light, breathe fresh air.
‘They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,’ he muttered, though he knew it wasn’t true.
Brook clenched a fist. He had to go on. Sorenson was waiting for him. This could be the final test. And passing it could get him the ringside seat for Reaper 2-The Reckoning. This time it was personal. So he inched forward, scuffing his feet across the floor to ensure he didn’t tread on a scavenging rodent. He cursed Sorenson for leading him here and himself for being so squeamish.
Where was Sorenson? If he was in the next room he was certainly being very sparing with the torch. Perhaps thiswas a trap after all, Sorenson’s solution to a year of harassment, but before he could ponder this theory further his blood curdled at the sound of a deep and baleful howling, emanating from the entrails of the house.
He had no time to decide whether to run or freeze because a shadow fell across the faint light of Brook’s destination. It was moving fast and, before he could dive out of the way or even raise an arm for protection, the shadow had hurtled into him with a sickening thud of skull on skull.
Brook went flying in the dark and landed on his left shoulder, with a distasteful skid through something rotten and slimy.
But the shadow wasn’t resting. Although knocked back by the collision, it rose quickly and charged headlong through the door, slithering to a halt before taking the stairs two at a time. Brook clambered to his feet. He caught a glimpse of a hairy face and filthy coat, shiny with wear, and made to follow but instead slipped on something that gave way under his foot and he sank back to the ground.
A foot from his head, a torch flicked on. The light startled the rat poised to sniff Brook’s face and it scuttled away, hastened by Brook’s scream of terror. He flailed his arms around his head for a moment to stave off any further invasion and scrambled onto his haunches, eyes wide, mouth set in a grin of fear.
