The Seventh Man, page 11
When she came out she felt warm and sleepy. She didn’t even mind the cold in his eyes because for some reason it didn’t feel so intense tonight. He passed her and went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. Celia stood there in the doorway between the bedroom and the living area looking at the door to freedom, wondering why he hadn’t confined her while he took his shower.
Celia shivered. Maybe he was testing her. He could be standing right behind the door waiting for her to bolt. Then he would run out and trap her again. Then he would tie her up again. Maybe he was testing her fear. Maybe he was trying to feed it so she’d eventually stop thinking of escape. Maybe he really was a psycho and would play this cat-and-mouse game until he drove her nuts as well.
Celia had never thought of herself as brave, knew in fact that she wasn’t. But she still took a tentative step toward the outside door, then another and another. Her eyes never left the bedroom doorway. She stuck her hand out, touched the doorknob. She turned it and pushed. Nothing happened. She pulled. She tried again to open the door and it didn’t budge, didn’t rattle in the frame when she shook the knob and beat on the door. The door was a literal steel trap.
She laughed out loud until she realized she sounded hysterical again. She backed up and fell on the sofa, despairing of ever being free. The door was deadbolt locked, and of course she had no key. She didn’t bother to search for it. He would have it in there with him. He hadn’t needed to tie her up because he knew that she couldn’t get out. Knew there were no windows to signal through. The silence crept into the core of her and stole the rest of her flagging strength. The thick walls blocked all outside noise. She could hear nothing but her own breathing, the shower, and the slight ping and hiss of the radiator. He knew it was safe to leave her untied. She should have known as well.
21
Thain was in a mood for sure, and it wasn’t a good one. They had found a map and set the three marking pins of the murder suspect’s known locations: Adie Road, the bank, and the store. Since the footage from Adie Road had yet to come in, they’d spent the last two hours, according to the clock on the computer, studying the newer surveillance footage from between the bank and the store where Celia had been abducted. They’d expanded their viewing area by ten streets, but St. John had yet to find results worth mentioning. Thain sighed in frustration. “This is taking entirely too long.”
“I can’t argue with you there, Thain, but I’m going as fast as I can and still give the attention to detail that this needs. Hats are small. This time of year there are too many people on the streets. Even the DSs out there looking for it haven’t turned up anything.”
“I know.” He stood and glowered at the screen from behind St. John’s chair. But St. John didn’t need Thain hanging over him, so he paced the room like a prisoner and said, “I just don’t understand why he’s holding on to her. I can’t figure out why he wants Celia Wight alive. If she was only at the wrong place at the wrong time, why is she still breathing? Without her, he could be long gone by now, but he left her bags for us to find, to tell us he still has her.”
Thain knew the Wraith would never have kidnapped anyone, much less take on a partner. “I need a change of scene. I’m going over to the murder room. Call me if you find anything, will you? I’ll take the map over there in case any more sightings from interviews have popped up that we haven’t heard of yet.”
“Of course. Sir, I mean, Thain, I’ve a question.”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind asking the chief about having someone else assigned here, to help view the footage? Since time is crucial, I could use another pair of eyes, or four.”
“I’ll make the call myself.”
“Thank you. Much appreciated. I know she’s point on this, but I don’t suppose . . . ?”
“Can’t guarantee anything about Rae, but I’ll try.” Thain actually winked at him.
St. John actually blushed. “Thanks.”
“Call if anything pops up?”
“First thing.”
So, St. John likes Rae. Would the lady detective date a lowly constable? Why was Thain even thinking about such things? He quit thinking like a gossip columnist and called the chief, who gave them the okay for another CCTV film viewer. “Sir, could it be DS Bell?”
“Thain, she’s point. Get Jenkins on it.”
“Yes, sir.” When he entered the murder room, he informed PC Patrick Jenkins of his new position on the team and sent him off to help St. John. He’d already texted a message about the change to Hawthorne. He certainly wouldn’t call Carter. Greeting the handful of people in the room—Greene, Martin, and O’Toole—he asked Greene to enter Jenkins’s new position. Putting the map up on the wall, he explained St. John’s and his theory before signing in for access to the Incident Room on HOLMES. He tapped on the keyboard and the IR screen popped up while he rubbed his face, tired and frustrated. This investigation was spread out too far. London was too big a warren. They had no idea where to look. Get over it, he told himself and shook off the useless sense of futility. Instead, he plowed into the mass of notes that the team had taken during phone calls and legwork and entered over the past two days.
Later, all he could think of was a break. His red, irritated eyes—not to mention his head—needed a rest. After viewing all the footage with St. John, and after an hour of catching up on HOLMES, a break sounded like a dream. But he hesitated. Celia Wight couldn’t take a break. He wasn’t the one alone with a madman. She didn’t know of the twenty-nine—or more—people on the job, round the clock, trying to find her because she had been kidnapped by the man they were searching for. She didn’t know that he’d pushed the angle of her abduction more than the murder with each new bit of information they’d gained. Hell, she didn’t know he existed. But he didn’t stop. Agatha’s image, the pure gladness of her laugh echoed in his mind. He’d never had a chance to apologize because she’d refused to see him after . . . Stop it, he thought. Don’t indulge yourself. The past didn’t help, only hindered. He knew that all too well from experience.
The thought that Celia Wight was running out of time depressed him. Then again, maybe she wasn’t the one running out of time. Maybe they were. The suspect could leave London whenever he chose to, judging by their lack of progress. Thain decided to change tactics for a moment. Because they didn’t know where the kidnapping/murder suspect had gone, the search had been declared citywide, and searching the entire city would be a near impossible feat. The map of the sightings stayed pinned to the wall, but with only three known areas, no discernible pattern had emerged, and he wasn’t sure it ever would.
His brain needed a jump start. He paged down to scan through the calls received and interview statements taken since the murder and kidnapping had occurred. The detectives out doing the legwork had been told to ask in shops, cafés, tube stations, etcetera, for information on anything out of the ordinary involving any man who might resemble their suspect. Their plan entailed throwing the net wide enough to catch more information that they could then slog through. He clicked on the automatic indexing for free-text matching— instructing the computer to scan the reams of notes for certain words—to see if anything popped up. Nothing did, which meant one of two things. Either he’d forgotten to turn on the auto indexing for text-matching when he set up this Incident Room, or there really were no matches, which was unusual. There should have at least been text-matching errors.
He went back through the setup. Had he set the automatic indexing on for free-text-matching? No. He must have gone too fast. He fixed his error and waited a moment for the Incident Room to reorganize, glad he’d caught his mistake himself instead of O’Toole, who’d entered all of the statements.
He clicked again on the indexing, then free-text-matching, and over twenty items showed up. A half hour later, eyes blurring with fatigue, he glanced at the next item in his search and though he saw the match immediately, its implication didn’t register at first. He read the complete sequence over again. Fatigue vanished, eyes cleared. He put up the two interviews that contained the matched phrasing side by side on his screen, and read the full accounts. The first statement came from a clerk who worked in a small department store in North Camden. Thain’s inner detective smiled. The southernmost edge of Camden was not so far away from the Royal Bank of Scotland.
“A man came in and bought a woman’s coat. He didn’t talk much and seemed in a bit of a hurry. He paid in cash and didn’t want it gift wrapped, though said it was for his wife. Not many people pay with cash anymore in this store.”
He blinked. He’d been right. The first match HOLMES identified was “paid in cash.” His fingers flew, bringing up the second statement: “Late this afternoon a man bought some clothes for a woman. He wasn’t talkative and paid in cash for the clothes.” The detective who’d taken the report asked if the saleswoman remembered the sizes of the clothes, and she said they were size tens, she thought, a small size. “The man appeared to know what he was looking for.” This interview had taken place in a larger store in North Camden. The two locations being in Camden was HOLMES’s second match. Mentally I thanked HOLMES, my trusty TARDIS. In both cases the detectives had asked about CCTV footage. So that could help, once it came in. He tagged an action to prioritize the need for that footage from both stores.
“He paid in cash.” Thain couldn’t help it. His brain started down familiar channels of investigation. He knew neither he nor anyone else investigating assassinations had ever traced the Wraith by credit cards, checks, or a savings account of any kind. He’d concluded long ago that the man used only cash, which gave him an idea. He dialed Clive’s number immediately.
Clive answered on the first ring. “What is it? Found something?”
“Possibly, I don’t know. We’ll need to do more checking.”
“But you called.” Clive sounded disappointed.
“Yes, I did. I have an idea, and perhaps we have a tip worth looking into. How soon can you get to the murder room?”
“Ten minutes?”
“Right, I’ll ring Rae as well.”
On the phone, Rae said she’d be there shortly, as she wasn’t far from the Hendon. He texted St. John to let him know he’d put in an order for the film in and around the two stores before he turned back to Greene. Energy pulsed again; Thain felt regenerated. “Listen, Greene, we need a call to action for more officers on interviews. Have them look for any anything being bought or paid for with cash. Food—”
“Restaurants?”
“No, too many people still pay cash in restaurants. Try local grocery shops and big supermarkets. Have them ask about supplies like toothbrushes or shoes or clothes in women’s sizes. Anything at all—and check to make sure they were paid for by a lone white male.”
“Shouldn’t we check with the DIs first, or the chief, before I put out the call?”
“Yes. Yes, but do it all now.”
“What did you find?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as Patterson and Bell get here.”
22
Celia lay on the sofa and stared into the room seeing nothing, feeling nothing, her mind a blank. The shower stopped, the bathroom door opened. She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
Though she heard nothing, she sensed it when he came and stood over her, watching her in silence. The longer he stood there, the more nervous she became. She opened her eyes. He was gone.
She turned over and drifted into sleep. But the images that came to her in dreams had no order, no kindness, no reason, only fear, only pain. A scream rose in her throat and she ached with the effort to subdue it. He wouldn’t find her if she didn’t scream. But the scream climbed up her throat, threatening to expose her. She couldn’t make a noise or the knife would hurt her again. She wouldn’t die before the misery of death settled upon her like a vulture and ate her alive. Celia screamed.
“Wake up. It’s a dream.” A distant voice cut through the crashing waves of terror.
“Wake up.” Hands lay upon her shoulders and she fought them off. The grip felt too tight, too sure. Celia screamed again but woke up fully when a hand covered her mouth, suffocating her for real because she couldn’t breathe fast enough to catch up with her slam-dunked senses. She twisted her head away, trying to escape the stranger’s hand, as her pulse raced on. He pulled her up against him and held on to her. His hand left her mouth but hovered, ever ready.
“It was but a dream.”
Hopeless tears churned inside her, ready to spill. “But you’re not.”
“No.”
Celia didn’t ask why not.
“Your dream was about me.” He guessed part of the truth.
Celia said, “You scare me.”
“You should be scared of me.”
She pulled away and looked at him, but he turned his head. The room was dark, but she could see his profile, soft for once in the dim light from the bedroom. “Why should I be? You don’t act like you’re crazy. If you wanted to, to take advantage of me, you could have done so numerous times by now. You carry a knife and no gun. You hide under the noses of those looking for you. I don’t understand.” The last came as a whisper. Celia shook her head, confused. She felt as if she’d stumbled into complete darkness with no light to give her hope of escape.
She stared at his silent face. Celia surprised herself when she reached up to brush her fingers through the stranger’s hair, but he caught her hand before she could touch him. He glared at her, annoyed, but he didn’t let go of her. Tension writhed from his hand to hers like a furious serpent, gleaming, shiny. Wildness climbed inside her, crazy, sparking a flame in her belly that in the end would explode, bringing, she feared, not bliss but death.
Celia freed her hand from his but her heart accelerated. Her blood raced through her veins as if to prevent her, but she touched him anyway. Everything in her said that to touch him would be dangerous, that she should stop before it was too late. But her fingers, though timid, caressed his hair, and this time he didn’t stop her, didn’t protest, nor did he take his eyes from hers. His hair felt unexpectedly fine and soft under her fingers. Other than her father’s, she’d never touched a grown man’s hair.
He didn’t move at first. Then he raised his hand to her hair, which wasn’t much longer than his. His touch was hesitant yet curious, as if he’d never felt another person before. His eyes shifted to watch his moving hand, a gentle tracing of her face, brushing her cheek, the line of her jaw. His eyes followed every move, yet his face remained unreadable. Celia stopped breathing.
He reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. Dread stalked like a specter as he pulled her into the bedroom. He turned her around and fear spiked through her. “I won’t hurt you,” he said from behind her. He lifted the edge of her shirt. She closed her eyes and held her breath. His fingers found the cut his knife had made on her back and smoothed gently over it. “I did this to you. I’m sorry.” Then he turned her to face him and sat her down on the bed. His hand took hers again and his thumb caressed her palm for a short while. Then he put her hand back in her lap, slowly, as if reluctant to let it go, and a shadow darkened his stern face. “You sleep in here this time.”
Kindness? It was the last thing she expected, and the only thing she’d ever wanted. Her abductor left the door open when he returned to the main room. Daring herself, and him, she turned the light off. She heard the sofa creak under his weight, strained for any sound of him stealing back into the room. Without bothering to ask herself why her heart didn’t slow to its normal beat, she drifted into blessed sleep.
When she awoke, he had gone, and she was tied to the bed.
23
Eight members of the team—Greene, Bell, Martin, Smyth, O’Toole, Patterson, and DIs Hawthorne and Carter—plus Thain sat in the murder room. Eight in the morning had come too early. Everyone looked haggard, and Thain didn’t want to think about the risk he’d decided to take; if he did, he wouldn’t be able to convince them. If the footage from inside the two stores had given them a frontal shot of the suspect, Thain wouldn’t be in the position he now found himself. But St. John had gotten the films from both stores, sooner than expected, and found nothing more useful than in the films of the bank heist and the store where their suspect had kidnapped Celia Wight. The man had kept his face away from any clear shot. The one thing that had clinched Thain’s decision was that the man in both stores had been white, alone, similar in build to their suspect, and he’d bought women’s wear of the correct size.
Thain decided he would say as little as possible, enough to plant the seed; but the risk remained all the same. He didn’t trust himself not to punch Carter—no matter who was watching—if Carter started ridiculing him on the Wraith issue again. He’d do anything to avoid that. Almost. He had to be extra cautious, because what he knew of the Wraith already tempted him to walk that familiar path and he couldn’t allow that desire, that habit, to bust through his locks and chains and publicize to the team just what made these two matches so important.
All eight looked at him, and he remained cautious. Just plant the seed. You don’t have to grow the tree. He inhaled. His breath came too shallow, too fast. He deepened it, slowed it down. Here goes nothing. “I have two questions,” he began. “What if this killer uses nothing but cash? And if he does, could that narrow our field?”
“How, exactly?” Hawthorne, in the seat next to him, asked the first question. “I mean, according to you he’s already bought her clothes. Why would he buy her more? How do we know he’s the one who bought those clothes to begin with?”
“Because of what we can see of him on the store videos. There are enough similarities to think he’s our man.” Thain had to explain this without anyone guessing why his thoughts had started down this path. “We have a description of the women’s clothing purchased. St. John has already changed the profile he’s looking for on all the incoming CCTV films to match those clothes. I think it’s possible the suspect bought a coat for himself as well, but no one would think to notice that in the same way they notice a man buying for a woman. Even if we don’t find either of them on film, the suspect won’t know that. He might keep changing their clothing in case we’re smart enough to guess he would use that angle. But that’s not the only point. So far we have a theory, if you prefer, about the two shops. There could be more. If you were on the run, staying in the city for whatever reason, would you want to be traceable? No, of course not. More people use credit or cheque cards now, so cash purchases should stand out a bit, especially those involving a lone male buying anything for a woman. Clothes aren’t inexpensive. Most people use a card for payment. Even cheques are used far less than, say, ten years ago.” The room remained silent. He began to wonder if they’d heard him correctly.
