Sadia was moving on to hug Carlton, when the back door of the Merc opened, and a whirlwind erupted onto the gravel. ‘Mummy, Mummy, I’ve missed you.’
Plump toddler legs pumped across the gravel as Sadia, turned, dropped to her knees, arms outstretched, her bag and jacket falling heedlessly to the dusty ground. The little boy launched himself into her arms and she swiped him up, twirled him round, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’ve missed you too, Billy boy.’
‘How much?’ The little boy’s hands dimpled with puppy fat cupped Sadia’s face.
‘To the moon and back a trillion squillion times.’
Placing the boy on the ground, Sadia held his hand and turned back to the group. Although her words were to everyone, her eyes made contact only with Gus. ‘This is Billy.’
Gus’s eyes narrowed, as his gaze moved to the little boy with the curly sun-bleached sandy hair and the blue eyes. A strange light-headedness gripped him and for a second, he thought he was going to faint. He lifted his eyes to his mum. Corrine’s eyes swayed between the little boy, drinking up his features, tears in her eyes, to her own son. She wrung her hands as she met Gus’s look. He looked at Sadia. The smile had died on her lips as she studied Gus’s reaction. He quirked an eyebrow and got an almost indeterminable nod in return. Head about to explode, he turned to his parents and instead of releasing the tirade of anger and rage that pulsed through him, he said only two very quiet, very damning accusing words before walking away from them. ‘You knew.’
Corrine took a step towards him, but Gus was too quick. Carlton, seeing he was heading to the car, grabbed his own bag, muttered a hurried farewell, and followed, barely managing to slam the passenger door shut behind him as Gus accelerated out of the parking lot.
Chapter 72
Bradford
Alice and Nancy had just returned to The Fort from Dr Mahmood’s crime scene. It had been one of the most difficult crime scenes for Alice to attend. Although she’d forced herself to focus on the mechanics of the scene – the positioning of the body, the fact that the cleaner had been drugged, and shoved in a cupboard, the way the desk had been shoved towards the back wall, and the fact that the security cameras had been jammed in some way – she’d found herself remembering flashes of her own sessions with the doctor and it took all her strength to park her grief at the door and concentrate on picking up clues that would lead them to the bastard. Despite the change of MO, Hopkins and Smedley had both been killed in their own homes – in their own beds – Dr Mahmood’s proximity to Gus and Corrine McGuire plus the strangulation bruises round her neck were more than enough to convince Alice that this was the work of the same depraved killer. The fact that Dr Mahmood had been killed so soon after his last ritual kill indicated that he was accelerating – spiralling – and that he would move quicker onto his next few kills.
‘We need Gus back here right now.’ Alice’s short hair was spiked up all over her head, more due to her frantic fingers than the copious amounts of hair gel she used.
Nancy glared at her. Despite her pallor, the older woman had a resolute glint in her eye. ‘You listen to me, DS Cooper. We do not need Gus here. He’s on his way and he’ll get here as soon as he can, but we don’t need him. We’re perfectly able to implement his instructions – hell, we live in the 21st century. He’s a phone call away – not a millennium away. Pull yourself together and stop being silly. We’ve got work to do.’
If Nancy had actually slapped her, Alice couldn’t have been more shocked – not by Nancy’s sentiments but by her use of the word ‘silly’. What the f…? Alice prided herself on being anything but silly. However, she had the good grace to realise that Nancy was right. They had a job to do and, in their absence, the teams that had been sent to check out Gus’s theory at the terraced houses had done so. Each team had located the point of entry and the CSIs were now combing the attic spaces, while officers questioned the neighbourhood regarding the comings and goings at the entry point houses. Things were in order in that respect and Alice took a moment to inhale a deep calming breath as she considered the other balls that were in the air.
She turned to Compo. ‘You found anything in Dr Mahmood’s cloud thingy doo dah?’ As she spoke, she wafted her arms in a ‘you know what I mean’ gesture which caused Compo to grin while simultaneously shaking his head in horror. ‘Actually, yes.’
As he spoke his expression sobered and his eyes narrowed. ‘This bastard is a ghost, but I see him. I just can’t quite catch him yet, but I will. He’s been accessing various files from Dr Mahmood’s client list – mine, yours, the bosses, DCI Chalmers, the boss’s mum.’
Alice frowned, she hadn’t been aware that Compo had used Dr Mahmood’s services, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. Instead, she stored that little nugget away to consider later on. Before she had a chance to ask what exactly the killer had accessed, Compo stuffed a Twix in his gob and around the chewing sounds managed to articulate a ‘The bastard knows everything about all of us.’ Grabbing an energy can, he yanked it open, took a swig, and then pressed another button showing some sort of encode stuff that looked like gobbledygook to Alice. ‘I checked our servers, too. The bastard’s been
