Don’t see us. Please don’t see us.
He flattened himself in the wheat. Heard the roar of the engine. Felt the glare of the headlights wash over him, then darkness returned.
The roar of the engine was fading.
He stood up. Red tail lights were briefly visible, then vanished. He saw them again a few seconds later. Then they were gone for good.
He waited a few more seconds before walking towards the van, then tossed the cigarette in through the open window of the driver’s door, turned and ran for several yards. He stopped and looked back.
Nothing happened. No flicker of a flame. Nothing at all.
He waited for what felt like an eternity. Still nothing happened.
Don’t do this to me!
Headlights were coming from the other direction now.
Don’t let this be the vehicle that passed, now turned round to come and look through the hole in the hedge!
To his relief, it wasn’t. It was a car, sounding like it wasn’t firing on all cylinders, blat-blatting its way up the hill. Its weak tail lights told him it was an old banger of some kind, its electrical system not liking the damp.
He waited another full minute, breathing in the increasingly strong reek of petrol in the air, but still nothing happened. Then he lit a second cigarette, stepped cautiously across and tossed that in. The result was the same. Nothing.
Panic started to grip him. Was the petrol dud?
A third vehicle came down the hill and passed by.
He pulled his handkerchief out, stepped cautiously up to the van, shone his flashlight in and saw both cigarettes, soggy and extinguished, lying in the pool of petrol on the cab roof. What the fuck was this? Cigarettes always lit petrol tanks in movies! He dabbed the handkerchief into the pool of petrol on the roof of the van, then stepped back and lit it.
There was such a violent explosion of flame that he dropped it, from shock, on to the ground. The handkerchief burned so intensely that all he could do was watch the flames consume it.
Now another bloody vehicle was coming down the hill! He hastily stamped on the burning handkerchief, stamping again and again, extinguishing it. His heart thumping, he waited for the sweep of lights to pass and the roar of the engine to fade.
He removed the backpack, took his anorak off, squashed it into a ball, leaned in through the window and dunked it into the pool of petrol for a couple of seconds. Then he stepped back, holding it at arm’s length, and shook it open. He clicked the lighter and there was a massive WHUMPH.
Flames leapt at him fiercely, searing his face. Ignoring the pain, he hurled the blazing anorak through the window, and this time the result was instant.
The whole interior of the van lit up like a furnace. He could see Molly Glossop clearly for some seconds before her hair disappeared and her colour darkened. He stood mesmerized, watching the flames, watching her get darker and darker still. Then, suddenly, what he had hoped for happened. The fuel tank exploded, turning the entire van into a blazing inferno.
Grabbing his backpack, he stumbled back to where he had flung his bike, mounted it and pedalled away from the scene as fast as he could, in the beautifully cool, silent air, taking his planned, circuitous route back to Brighton.
No vehicles passed him all the way back to the main road. He listened intently for the wail of a siren. But heard nothing.
62
Tuesday 13 January
Billy No Mates was seated in a window table of the cafe, digging her fork into a mountainous veggie salad, with watercress and frisee lettuce overflowing all around the rim of the bowl. It looked like she was eating a hairdo.
She chewed pensively, picking up her iPhone and staring at something on the screen in between mouthfuls. Her shoulder-length bleached hair was scooped up into a ponytail, with a few loose strands hanging down, just the way it had been the last time he had seen her, in Marielle Shoes, on Saturday.
She had a pretty face, despite her curiously hooked nose, and was dressed casually, almost sloppily, in a shapeless, sleeveless grey tunic over a black roll neck, jeans and sparkly trainers. He would have to get her to change out of those! Trainers on women just did not do it for him.
Clearly Jessie Sheldon didn’t bother with her appearance for work, or maybe her look was deliberate. Her albums on Facebook showed she could look very pretty with her hair down and in nice clothes. Beautiful in some. Stunning. A very sexy lady indeed!
And she wasn’t really Billy No Mates at all, although she did look like that at this moment, just sitting there all on her own. She actually had 251 friends, as of earlier today, when he’d last checked out her Facebook site. And one of them, Benedict Greene, was her fiance – well, as good as, although they were not formally engaged, yet, she’d explained on the site. Sssshh! Don’t tell my parents!
She was a good networker. She kept all her friends updated daily on her activities. Everyone knew what she would be doing in three hours’ time, in six hours’ time, in twenty-four hours’ time, and for the next several weeks. And just like Dee Burchmore, she Tweeted. Mostly, at the moment, about her diet. Jessie is thinking of eating a KitKat… Jessie resisted the KitKat… Lost a pound today!… Rats, put on a pound today! Only eating vegetarian for rest of this week!
She was a good girl, so helpful to him! She Tweeted far more than Dee Burchmore. Her latest was sent just an hour ago: Keeping to diet! Lunching vegetarian today at Lydia, my current fave!
She was tapping away on the iPhone now. Maybe she was Tweeting again?
He liked to keep an eye on his women. This morning, Dee Burchmore was at the spa at the Metropole Hotel, having a Thalgo Indoceane Complete Body Ritual. He wondered whether to have one too. But thought better of it. He had things to do today; in fact he should not be here at all. But it felt so good! How could he resist?
Billy No Mates had Tweeted earlier: Going to look at those shoes again at lunchtime – hope they’ll still be there!
They were! He’d watched her take a photo of them with her iPhone, then tell the assistant she was going to have a think about them over lunch. She asked the shop assistant if she would keep them aside for her until 2 p.m. The assistant said she would.
They were dead sexy! The black ones, with the ankle straps and the five-inch steel-coloured heels. The ones she wanted to wear, she had told the assistant, when she went to a function with her boyfriend, who would be meeting her parents for the first time.
Billy No Mates tapped out something on the keyboard, then raised the phone to her ear. Moments later her face lit up, animated. ‘Hi, Roz! I just sent you a photo of the shoes! Have you got it? Yeah! What do you think? You do? Really? OK! I’m going to get them! I’ll bring them over and show them to you tonight, after my squash game! What film are we going to see? You got The Final Destination? Great!’
He smiled. She liked horror movies. Maybe she might even enjoy the little show he had planned for her! Although it was not his intention to give pleasure.
‘No, the car’s fine now, all fixed. I’ll pick up the takeaway. I’ll tell him not to charge us for the seaweed. He forgot it last week,’ she continued. ‘Yeah, OK, soy sauce. I’ll make sure he puts extra in.’
His own mobile rang. He looked at the display. Work. He pressed the red button, sending it to voicemail.
Then he looked down at the copy of the Argus he had just bought. The front page headline shouted:
POLICE STEP UP VIGILANCE AFTER THIRD CITY RAPE
He frowned, then began to read. The third attack, over the weekend, was in the ghost train on the pier. There was hot speculation that the so-called Shoe Man, who in 1997-8 had committed four and perhaps five rapes – and possibly many more that had never been reported – was back. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, the Senior Investigating Officer, stated it was too soon for such speculation. They were pursuing a number of lines of enquiry,
