Thrusting a leg back to arrest my motion, I turned to see who I had bumped. A man with a buzz cut was glaring at me. He was in his thirties and dressed like a monk. Sort of. His cassock – I believed that was the right word for his thick floor-length robe – was black. A large hood fell behind his head and his sleeves hung low beneath his arms which were tense and ready to rise into a fighting stance.
So, he looked like a monk, sort of, but he clearly wasn’t one. The tattoos on his neck and knuckles and a scar on his jawline were other indicators. I couldn’t see his feet, but I doubted he was wearing sandals. From the grimace on his face, I thought combat boots were more likely.
‘You should watch where you are going, sonny,’ he growled.
Honestly, I thought the man I walked into connected with me on purpose, but I had no time for nonsense right now, so he was getting the benefit of the doubt.
‘Terribly sorry,’ I offered him, making my face as emotionless as possible. ‘I was distracted. Are you hurt?’
‘Hurt?’ he sneered. ‘You think you can hurt me?’
I was being challenged, something which would normally be seen as free permission to demonstrate why people ought to not challenge me. This was not the time.
Amanda returned with my phone. ‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
I was already on edge and very much wanting to find someone to punch – namely the Sandman. Monk-from-Hell would do for now but venting my frustration in public was only going to delay me getting to Jane – hospital security were only yards away.
‘It’s nothing,’ I replied, setting off for the doors again and putting the idiot from my mind.
‘Go on. Walk away,’ he goaded to my back. ‘Next time it won’t be an option.’
Amanda sensed me tense and grabbed my arm. ‘There’s no time,’ she reminded me needlessly.
I felt the sense of urgency most keenly. We were likely to pull an all-nighter, refusing to stop our research and investigation until we found a thread to unravel. How could we give up and go to bed when we knew Jane was out there somewhere?
Exiting the hospital, I spotted the chief inspector ahead and started running. He was about to get into his car.
‘Yo! Quinn!’ I shouted loud enough to make him turn his head. There were other officers around him - his small entourage of butt kissers no doubt.
He didn’t bother to wait to see what I wanted. Despite observing me running in his direction, he opted to doff his hat and slide into the passenger seat of a squad car instead.
The car was pulling out of its parking space by the time I got there, the chief inspector pointing for the driver to go around me.
I threw myself on the bonnet of the car. Try driving now.
Quinn puffed out his cheeks in annoyance and a small tick appeared by the corner of his left eye. That I was upsetting him bothered me not the slightest.
‘Jane Butterworth has been kidnapped by a serial killer!’ I shouted through the windscreen.
Reluctantly, he motioned for his driver to switch off the engine and picked up his hat once more.
I waited until he got out of the car before I slid down from the bonnet and back onto my feet. ‘That music you hear on her phone, Chief Inspector, surely you recognised it?’
He twitched an eyebrow. ‘What of it?’
‘The Sandman,’ I knew he knew what I was talking of. ‘He was responsible for terrorising a woman called Karen Gilbert. That was at the start of this month. There was a fire at her house, and she is still in hiding. Jane’s research showed there were other cases going back years. Do you really not have someone looking into it? You were involved in the case,’ I pointed out while doing my best to keep my exasperation in check.
He tapped a thoughtful finger to his chin and crossed his arms. ‘The Sandman. Yes, I do remember Mr Butterworth expressing some concern about it.’
I snapped. ‘She saved your life, Ian,’ I pointed out, coming forward a foot so I was right in his face. ‘She nearly lost hers doing it, and yet you cannot manage to respect her right to determine her own gender.’
There were several things I knew for sure about Chief Inspector Ian Quinn: he hated being addressed by his first name, and he truly hated that his life was saved by a person he privately considered to be a crossdressing freak.
Before he had a chance to retort, I launched my next salvo. ‘You have a serial killer operating in the area with murders going back years. If you don’t get off your backside and get involved in trying to find Jane Butterworth, so help me when I bust this case open and catch the guy behind it, I will publicly destroy you.’
My teeth were gritted together as we stared menacingly into each other’s eyes.
His driver was out of the car, so too a pair of sergeants from the other car. Had they not known who I was, or had former constable, Amanda Harper, not been with me, I think they would have moved to intervene.
They didn’t, and Quinn was forced to deal with me. He broke the gaze first, fishing in his pocket for a handkerchief. Using it to wipe his face as if I had covered him in rabid spittle, he said nothing until he was ready.
‘The Sandman is a figment of an overactive imagination, Mr Michaels. There is no serial killer operating in Kent and if you tell the press there is, I shall seek to destroy
