everything. Nothing stays pure. Nothing stays untouched. You must understand I need to make sure. Yes, yes. Surety and purity. I must not be corrupted by your flesh. Desire must come later, not now. I don’t want to get dirty again.’
He moved between her legs.
‘NO!’
*
Now the cold slipped into her skull, deadening the memory somewhat but freezing the images too, as if to stop her forgetting.
He had examined her for a few minutes, pausing every so often to scribble in a notebook. Then his expression changed, something had annoyed him and, without a word, his coat fell from his shoulders and he tore at his clothes until he had stripped himself naked. He stood between her spread-eagled legs with his hands grasping her waist and raped her. Horrid grunting sounds spluttered from him with each thrust and he came with a gasp and shouted that name again.
‘Emma! Emma! Emma!’
When it was all over he wouldn’t meet her gaze. He took a cloth from the trolley, held the bitter smelling material over her face and she drifted to sleep.
She woke to complete darkness, freezing cold and the knowledge of certain death. But that was OK because she was more scared of living now. She had seen the other instruments on the table and the look of utter depravity in Harrison’s eyes. Death would be a release. Except… except…?
Dad, I love you.
If she died she wouldn’t see him again, would she? The thought of him grieving so soon after her mother’s death, of him never knowing how much she loved him overwhelmed her and she began to sob.
No, I am not going to die!
Calmer now, but still very cold, she reached her hands out to explore the dark space. Tiny, not the room where she had spent the last dozen or so days. She stretched her legs out in front of her, but when she tried to sit up she banged her head. To either side of her she touched some sort of wall.
Like plastic?
When she knocked her fist on the surface she was sure. She was in a kind of large plastic box.
Cold?
Yes, ice cold. A humming noise as well, like an electric motor or something.
She scrabbled around with her hands and feet, trying to find the limits of her confinement. To one side of her she discovered a small grill-like opening in the plastic. She tried to get her fingers through the grill but the openings were way too small. There seemed to be an air flow coming through the slits though, cold air, freezing air… a freezer! She was locked in a freezer!
She put her head in her hands and let all the air flood from her lungs in a long sigh. With the extreme cold there wouldn’t be too many more breaths, and naked there was little she could do to conserve her body heat. She thought she remembered something from childhood swimming lessons where you were supposed to curl yourself in a ball so she tried that, putting her hands behind her head and pushing it down between her knees. That was when she found something.
A hairclip.
They insisted on your hair being tied back at work and she wore both a hair band and a couple of metal clips. The clip had been tangled in her hair for all these days. She pulled it out and turned in the small space to get at the grill. The clip slipped between the little slits and she poked it in farther and began to wiggle it around.
Bang! A bright blue flash and her body slamming back against the side of the box. A tingling shot along her arm and a convulsion ran through her chest and something smelt bad. Like when the toaster had gone wrong at home and tripped the cut-out switch. A pungent odour reached her nostrils, a mixture of electrical components having shorted out and organic material burning.
My hand.
It hurt now, a searing pain along the backs of her fingers. She slumped down, knocking her head on the side of the box. An extreme drowsiness overcame her and in front of her eyes stars flared in a dark night sky. The sky span round and round and round and then the stars were fading to an inky black nothing, like when the lights in the theatre went down at the end of a play. Silence, everything quiet and she was aware that even the humming of the electric motor had stopped.
Chapter 34
Laira Bridge Road, Plymouth. Tuesday 9th November. 8.05 am
Savage yawned. Bed late and up early yet again wasn’t doing her any good at all. And crawling through the morning traffic didn’t help either. Stop, start, green light, red light, some tosser cutting her up on the bridge. She wanted a clear road, a smooth ride, but somehow the option had been left off the menu, at least with this case.
She mulled over the possible actions open to the team now they had all but confirmed Matthew Harrison as the killer of Kelly Donal and Simone Ashton. Tracing Harrison was the force’s highest priority, but the empty fridge and half a dozen pieces of mail behind the front door suggested he hadn’t been in his flat for a few days. Had he somehow got wind of details of the investigation and cut and run? If so, what did that do for their chances of finding Alice Nash alive now fourteen days were up? The chilling picture of Simone Ashton on the camera Enders had found pointed to Harrison carrying out some sort of procedure on the girls. God help Alice, Savage thought.
The jam cleared and Savage got to the station just in time for the morning briefing in the Major Crimes suite. She squeezed in past the overflow of officers crammed in the corridor, and when Enders spotted her entering he let out a cheer that was followed up by everyone else in the room. Hardin beamed at her and bounced across like a gas-filled party balloon, knocking into desks and causing coffees to spill and computer monitors to wobble.
‘What can I say? Congratulations to everyone. Case solved. Now we just need to catch the bastard!’
To that end he detailed the liaisons he was setting up with other forces and with the port authorities. Savage reckoned a more likely result would come from the crime scene trawl which had been going on all night and would continue throughout the day. So far only the pictures linked any of the girls with Harrison’s house. After Hardin had shaken hands with everyone and returned to his office to work on his media briefing Savage sat down with Riley, Calter and Enders and they began to work up possible actions.
‘He must have another place, ma’am.’ Riley said. ‘A garage, a lockup, a boat even.’
Riley was right. The girls hadn’t been murdered at the house in Plymouth. Harrison would have dealt with them somewhere else. Somewhere quiet.
Savage instructed Riley to get over to Harrison's flat on Grand Parade and try to find anything which might indicate a location he could have used. She would take Calter and Enders back to Malstead Down and see if they could dig anything up in the village.
‘It doesn’t appear as if Harrison had any connection to Malstead, but the evidence points to something. He dumped Kelly in the wood on the evening of the twenty-fifth of October, the night the village held its bonfire party. However, Simone is left in the church. On the twenty-fifth Harrison would have found it impossible to leave Kelly in the church, but my hunch is that is what he intended. The question is, why? Now we have a name we can do some door-to-doors and maybe drive around the area and see what we can pick up.’
‘The old lady, ma’am,’ Calter said.
‘Which one? Old ladies are not in short supply in Malstead.’
‘The one at the top of the green. The little cottage with the tumble down porch thingy. Mrs Harbersher I think her name was. She said she had lived in the village all her life. Born and bred. If anyone could remember Harrison she might. If she can remember anything, that is. When I visited she thought I had come to read the electric meter until I showed my ID.’
*
Calter was right about the old lady. When she opened the door to Calter again she behaved as if there had been some problem with her bill payment.
