Chapter 41
Chapter Forty-One
I didn’t go to Cavendish Gardens, although that was where I directed Lachy and Verity.
I knew Justine wouldn’t be there, she wouldn’t take her past back into her present, the place that was her springboard.
If she was our killer, the chubby, awkward teenager that had been picked on by the popular girls in Aberwyn, she’d keep that life in the last place she’d been that person, the last place Kelly-Anne would’ve lived.
Irk Vale Halls were a relic of the sixties, concrete and crumbling, even ten years ago when I’d been a resident there.
The rooms had been small, the bathrooms shared, which current students would never cope with.
They were about two miles away by road, but there were short cuts, ones I’d walked and ran along many times, knowing the spots where it was darker, where unknown faces loomed, and the ginnels and snickets where it was best to avoid, if you could.
Vinny was ringing me as I got closer, Harris fencing blocking off entrances to the halls, ‘Danger! Keep Out!’ signs colourful with graffiti.
The halls had been condemned at least four years ago, the place now a haunt for teenagers and addicts, the occasional homeless person and urban explorers, some of the rooms still containing the relics of years ago, posters drooping off walls, beds left unmade, waiting for a body that would never return.
I didn’t answer the call. I didn’t have time to listen to Vinny tell me to wait for back up, wait for him, or Nick, or one of the others. If it was Justine, if Justine was Kelly-Anne Marsh, then Sophie was the last one. Just this one, then revenge would be had.
Her job would be done. Her therapy complete.
I thought of Mike as I knocked away the rest of the glass from a broken window, seeking the quickest way in.
Irk Vale used to house six hundred students, usually first years, most of the rooms singles.
There were four common rooms, one for each wing, and two bars, the sorts of places where it would be a quid for a shot, always on a Wednesday when the rugby players had finished on the pitch and the drinking games began.
I’d avoided them, going to the gym instead, boxing and fighting and kicking, getting stronger, quicker, faster.
I ran through the corridors, barely making a sound as my feet fled through silent halls, dust and old plates and tatty curtains in car wrecks of rooms. My phone vibrated again. I took it out, dismissed Vinny’s call, and then shared my location with him.
A text came straight back through.
On my way.
For seven years he’d been irritating me. For seven years he’d had my back.
I was walking through the ground floor corridor in the third wing when the air particles changed. They were charged with something else: breath, fear, excitement. Something wasn’t still anymore, there was movement.
So I froze.
I listened, heard nothing, just the quietness of dying memories as the halls faced their last days, a slice of history about to fall.
I was in the Medlock block, the wing furthest from the main road, but behind it were the garages for university vehicles, although even by the time I lived here, they were empty, disused.
I started to walk again, slowly, like a cat skulking away from a tormentor, trying not to be seen, not to be noticed.
Two more bedrooms were empty, old beds and mattresses soiled and damp, the stale smell of decay overwhelming.
I passed plumbing for a washer in a cove off the hallway, then a kitchen, coated with dust and grease and with a dead rat on the floor.
There was a fire door, open, leading onto the gravelled yard, the old garages through the overgrowth half visible.
I headed outside, checking behind me, aware of the silence, the fractured stillness, the sound of birdsong because nature had taken back over here.
There was stupidity in what I was doing. I had no weapon with me, no ASP to draw on, no back-up. The expanse of the gravelled yard seemed vast, too open, but then if someone was going to come at you with a weapon, you were better seeing it in advance.
Four adjoined garages stood there, rotten wood and flaking paint adorning them, spinsters watching a ball. I headed closer, spotting a dark car tucked away behind ivy tangled privets, just the bumper and end of the boot exposed.
The garages were a perfect place to bring someone. Nothing overlooked them apart from the empty eyed windows of the halls, seeing nothing. Behind the trees was a field, used for sports, dog walking, muggers and flashers. It was an oasis of loneliness in a forever moving parade of city life.
The garage doors had been blocked up with metal sheets, more danger signs pinned up and defaced.
Each had a door that had once been padlocked but were now all agape or fully warped.
One was closed, and I headed to that one first, holding my breath, tuning out the birdsong, listening for movement, anything that didn’t fit.
Nothing.
More stillness. More silence. But something wasn’t right.
Back to the door, I pushed it open, taking out my phone and using it as a torch.
At the back of the garage, on a blanket, lay the woman I’d spoken to that morning.
There were no scrubs now, but skinny jeans and a coat, her head tipped at an uncomfortable angle and her eyes closed.
I remembered how Evelyn had been drugged, probably tied up, and now I knew how, because Sophie – unless she was already dead – was the same.
I scuttled to the side of the garage, the side that wasn’t lit by the open door, keeping in the shadows, walking sideways so I could see anyone who came in, until I’d got to Sophie.
I found a neat pile, carefully stacked - tarpaulin, a suitcase, the sliver blade of a single-edged, with a serrated upper third designed to tear rather than slice.
I knew whose DNA we would find on it; knew it would match Charlie Mason’s somehow too.
A beat against my fingers when I pressed them against Sophie’s neck told me she was alive. I crouched down, turning off the torch on my phone and going into my favourites to call Vinny.
“I’ve found - ” I stopped, dropping the phone, a silhouette at the door blocking the light.
Tall, slim, hair tied back, I recognised her outline. Her face was in darkness, the light gone, going further when she closed the door.
We both moved to where the knife was at the same time, the same thought occurring to us both. I was quicker, but she was more familiar with the space, our bodies clashing in the dark, the knife the prey before it became me.
I didn’t overthink. I didn’t consider Sophie, unconscious in the corner, or the fact that my phone was still – hopefully – connected to Vinny’s. I didn’t think about the time when I’d been overpowered, eliciting a freeze response, I forgot to get lost in my head.
I punched, kicked, kneed, grasped, not relying on the light to see where Justine was, but feeling for her, feeling the air change, the air charged.
She would kill me to get out of here.
My fist met her jaw and I knew she’d stumbled back. I didn’t wait for her to respond, moving towards her, knowing what the distance was between us, knowing she had a longer reach than me, knowing I had trained for this.
I needed to floor her, that was the only goal right now, that and to keep her away from the knife.
“Daniel said you were a fighter. He said you had issues.” She caught the side of my head as I dodged. Her back was now against the wall, the knife behind me, a glittering prize.
As soon as she stepped away, she was going to try to get to it, I was certain. If she had the weapon, despite my years of training, she would have the advantage. That knife was her only way out now.
I thought of the story Sophie had told me, Kelly-Anne being locked up in cellars by those girls. Being trapped or locked in would be her worst fear. Prison wasn’t an option.
She had everything to lose here.
I backed away, edging towards the knife, waiting for her to come at me, my eyes not leaving the spot where she was, even though it was almost impossible to see her in the darkness.
She would want to finish what she’d started. She’d want to kill Sophie and then me.
I said nothing, desperate to ask her questions, focusing only on her and which way she’d move.
More stillness. More waiting. And then –
She flew at me, charging, her body in motion.
I dipped my head and ran at her, conscious she could take a sidestep towards the knife, which she did.
That gave me momentum, barging into her side, a rugby tackle, and we fell to the floor, wrestling on the ground, her trying to leave my grasp to get the knife.
She was taller than me, but thinner, probably still struggling with her relationship with food.
I was strong and used to being hit, kicked, bit – I felt her teeth sink into my arm, so I pushed her head backwards, grimacing with the pain, and then she was on her back and I had control, her arm stretching out, reaching for the knife that was still just out of reach but only by centimetres, the glint of light that spilled in from the slightly open door illuminating it like some holy grail.
I battled with her arms, my shins over her thighs, hands now on her elbows, pressing her down and hoping for the cavalry, never having wished to see Vinny as much as I did right now, or even a nearby patrol car.
She tried to sit up, forcing her head up in an effort to headbutt me, but I was heavier than her and trained in this.
My heart rate steadied, still high on adrenalin, my sympathetic nervous system had calmed.
I could be like this for another five or ten minutes, and I wouldn’t fatigue, but Justine had.
She would rally soon, some energy would kick in, the need to survive, the need to get out of this, the desire to finish what she’d started.