Brook jumped into the BMW, fumbling for the ignition key. Finally he jammed it into the ignition and started the car. He froze for a few seconds, gazing off into the murk, seeing only his past. He slapped the lacquered wood of his steering wheel with the flat of his palm and turned off the engine.
‘Two years in the ground and still no peace.’
He took a huge breath and stepped out of the car. As though in a trance, he walked back along the road through the billows of mist. Instead of making his way to the Wallis house again, Brook stopped a few doors away, getting his bearings. He looked at the house on his right. Windows were closed but there was faint light coming from inside. He set off for the path at the side of the house, which might once have supported a garage but which was now a scrubby weed-infested driveway, along which two lines of paving slabs had been dropped rather than laid, to enable access to a car.
Brook approached the corner of the house and peered around it. He saw the smouldering glow of the brazier against the blackness. The music was clearer now, beautiful and gentle. He could see dark shapes ahead, barely outlined by the dying radiance of the coals. He took another huge breath and stepped towards the abyss.
Brook didn’t know how long he stood in that yard before brain function returned. Later, in the peace of his office, he would calculate it at two or three minutes. Looking back, he would try to remember what he’d been thinking as he stared at a scene that wouldn’t have been out of place in an abattoir.
In the aftermath, he could only liken the experience to some kind of seizure or maybe the deepest stupor of a heroin rush, inducing a paralysis so deep that he was powerless to move or prevent the flow of images from his past. The Reaper had returned and Brook stood in the gallery of the dead admiring the brush-work but feeling the detachment of the critic. The Reaper was outside looking in at humanity and Brook stood with him.
What brought him back was not a noise or a stray light, but a sensation in his nervous system so real, that he felt as though someone was rubbing a snowball up and down his bare spine. He wasn’t alone. Brook could feel eyes burning into his back. He turned slowly, panning round a pixel at a time, until he faced a newer section of the yard’s boundary, a single section of shiplap fencing that bridged the gap between two crumbling walls. The top of the fence was smeared and stained with what looked like blood and Brook took a step towards it. As he did so, another noise behind him made him turn again. For a moment he listened, but except for the music there was nothing. Brook gazed back at the shiplap panel but the sensation had passed, and some kind of thought process had returned.
He walked back to the front of the house, fishing in his pocket for his new mobile phone. A second later an arm folded around Brook’s neck while another arm pulled his hand down by his side, forcing him to drop the phone onto the ground. Brook began to struggle and instinctively put his free hand up to protect his throat from a blade.
‘Take it easy, mate. You’re going nowhere, so relax,’ said a voice into his ear.
‘Don’t struggle,’ said another voice, ‘and you won’t get hurt.’ ‘We just need to know what you’re doing here…’ said the first voice.
‘…and see some ID,’ continued the second.
Brook held his body limp to signal acceptance of the terms and conditions and the arm around his throat spun him around to push him back against a wall.
‘I’m DI Brook, CID.’
Suddenly the pressure on his torso evaporated and the voices lost their well-grooved tone and became tense and clipped. ‘Sir! Sorry, sir. We had no idea.’ Brook fumbled for his warrant card but a gloved hand touched his breast pocket. ‘No need, sir. I recognise you now.’
‘You could have asked for ID straightaway.’
‘Sorry, sir. But we’re responding to a 999 call.’
Brook was bending down to pick up his phone but looked up sharply. He hesitated for a second then said, ‘I know. I heard the message from Dispatch and I wasn’t too far away. Did you catch who called it in?’
‘We’re not sure exactly. Emergency services got a suspicious call from a mobile. Bit garbled but the caller left their mobile on so they located the signal and asked us to have a look.’
‘Right,’ nodded Brook.
‘We’d have been here sooner but were on another call.’
‘So sorry if we…’
‘PC Duffy, isn’t it?’ asked Brook.
‘That’s right, sir. And PC Parker.’
‘Well, we’ve no time to waste. Stay here and get back onto Dispatch. I’ve only been here a few minutes myself but we seem to have several bodies and one survivor…’
‘Bodies?’ repeated Duffy as though the word was unfamiliar to him.
‘Bodies, Duffy. Murdered. It looks like The Reaper,’ he added. It had the desired effect.
‘The Reaper!’ replied Duffy and Parker in unison.
‘We’re going to need ambulances. Also, very important, get onto Dispatch and get Forensics here urgently — as well as the duty police surgeon. Third — maybe you’d better write this down — we need to start the hunt now. I think the killer may still be close. We need patrol cars blocking all roads off the estate as soon as possible. We need to get the helicopter and the thermal-imaging cameras up in case he’s hiding in someone’s garden. Also Traffic. We need to keep an eye on all suspicious movement on the roads linking Drayfin to all major routes, especially the Ml southbound …’
‘What about northbound?’ asked Parker, scribbling furiously.
‘Why not? And investigate any vehicle driving erratically or speeding away from Derby, particularly vans with anyone in overalls or protective clothing. There won’t be many this time of night.’
‘Anything else, guv?’ asked PC Duffy.
‘Apart from not calling me guv, no. Wait … yes. Tell Dispatch to get DS Noble down here now.’
Noble arrived twenty minutes later and parked beside the flashing ambulance. For once, his customary poise, so studiously nurtured and encouraged by Brook, was under pressure. He approached Brook, who was standing alone at the front gate of the house pulling on a cigarette.
‘Sir,’ he said with admirable brevity. The two officers exchanged no more than a glance.
Brook was about to speak when two ambulance men wheeled out a body on a trolley. The detectives both turned to look at the face, disfigured by spatters of blood, an oxygen mask covering his mouth.
‘That’s Jason Wallis,’ Noble shrieked in bewilderment. ‘It can’t be.’ He turned to Brook who returned only an enigmatic smile. ‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ he said, forgetting Brook’s disapproval of swearing. ‘Jason Wallis again?’
‘Easy, John. How’s the patient?’ asked Brook.
The paramedic at the front of the trolley paused to address Brook. Despite years of experience, the man seemed shaken. ‘He hasn’t got a scratch on him — far as we can tell. He’s well out of it, had a lot to drink. But none of the blood on him seems to be his.’
Brook looked at the bloodstained latex glove on the man’s hand. ‘Did you touch the scalpel?’
‘I don’t think so. We left it on the arm of the sofa, next to the mobile.’
‘Good.’
The man paused and sought Brook’s eye with an expression Brook had seen many times before. ‘I’ve seen car wrecks…’ He shook his head and continued toting the trolley to the back of the ambulance with his partner. Noble’s eyes followed the flashing light down the street as the ambulance drove away, then turned to Brook. ‘So it’s The Reaper again.’
Brook decided not to challenge him. ‘It looks like it.’
‘And Wallis too. It doesn’t make sense. Unless DI Greatorix was right. Maybe Jason did kill his own family and got a taste for it.’
‘And managed to leave himself unconscious at the scene again? I don’t think so, John.’
‘Then what have we got?’
‘We’ve got a sophisticated and ruthless executioner who seems to be staking out this estate like a great white shark. That’s not Jason. But you’re right in one sense. I think someone would like us to think it was Jason.’
