House of the dead, p.4
House of the Dead, page 4
Instead of exploding, as Dani had expected, Battle simply said, “Don’t worry about me. Now, get going, both of you.”
They left the office and went back to their desks. “You were pushing it a bit in there,” Dani told Tony.
“He needs to be just as mentally alert as the rest of us.”
“He knows that,” she said.
“Does he? Because he looks like he hasn’t slept in days.”
“It isn’t our job to look after him. He told us to go home, so that’s what we do.”
“Sure,” Tony said. “But do you really think we’ll get a great night’s sleep tonight and be back here in the morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?”
Dani didn’t answer. She knew sleep wouldn’t come easily tonight. Not with a twelve-year-old kid out there somewhere. If Battle hadn’t ordered her to leave, she’d have been here all night, burning the midnight oil with everyone else on the night shift.
Instead, she picked up her coat and bag and said, “Come on, we’d better get out of here before Battle has us thrown out.”
Tony picked up his notebook and followed her out. As they went down the stairs, they met Ian Radcliffe on his way up.
“Going home already?” he said with a grin. He might have meant it as a joke, but Dani was in no mood for humour. She shot a grimace at the Counter Terrorism officer and stepped past him.
When they got outside the building, Tony said, “What do you think about Radcliffe?”
“I don’t think anything about him. Should I?”
Tony looked back at the building, a thoughtful look crossing his face. “I’d say we’ve determined that this case has nothing to do with terrorism, but he’s still here. Why is he hanging around?”
“If Battle didn’t want him here, he’d tell him to sling his hook,” she said.
“Would he, though? I don’t think Battle knows what day it is at the moment.”
“That’s the boss you’re talking about.”
“I just mean that in all the chaos, Radcliffe could be hanging around unnoticed.”
Dani frowned at the psychologist. She wasn’t sure what he was getting at.
“All I’m saying is we need to be wary of him,” Tony said. “Something about him seems a bit off.”
“He’s a new face. You tend not to trust people when you first meet them.”
“It isn’t that. I have an instinct for these things.”
She knew he was referring to the time he recognised the Lake Erie Ripper in Canada, but this situation wasn’t comparable. Ian Radcliffe wasn’t a serial killer Tony had been studying; he was a police officer the psychologist had only just met.
“Are you sure this isn’t something to do with Ryan?” she said.
His brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He wasn’t who we thought he was. Maybe that’s made you distrustful of people. Well, more distrustful, anyway.”
He narrowed his eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to psychoanalyse me?”
“I would never do that,” she said innocently.
He grinned. “Maybe it’s you I shouldn’t trust. Trying to steal my job.”
Dani laughed. “See you in the morning.”
“All right,” he said, taking his car keys from his pocket. “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, remember.”
She went to her Land Rover and got in behind the wheel. She turned the radio on and heard Gallow’s voice coming from the speakers. The Superintendent was talking to the press, telling them the bare minimum and trying to ensure the public that they were in no danger. He added a caveat to that last part, telling everyone to stay vigilant and look out for their neighbours.
Dani listened to the press conference during the drive home. Most of the questions from the reporters were about David Goddard. Were the police hopeful that they’d find the boy alive? Was there any evidence to suggest that David had poisoned his family and run away?
Gallow assured them that the police hoped to find David alive. Regarding the suggestion that the boy might have poisoned his family, the superintendent said that only the gutter press would ask such a thing. David was just as much a victim as the other members of his family.
By the time Dani got home, a debate was raging on the radio about whether the police force should have high profile departments like Murder Force or if their existence might cause publicity seekers to commit crimes just to get on the telly.
She got out of the Land Rover and looked out over the North Yorkshire Moors. No matter how bad her day had been, seeing the moors always calmed her.
As she approached the front door of her cottage, she heard Barney and Jack—her German shepherds—scrabbling at the other side of the door and whining in anticipation of her arrival.
Both dogs ran out when she opened the door and circled her, wagging tails beating against her legs.
“All right, you two, let’s get inside,” she said, ruffling the fur on the backs of their necks. “We’ll have something to eat first, and then go for a walk. How does that sound?”
Barney and Jack followed her inside, staying close to her legs. She filled their bowls with food and opened the fridge in search of something for herself.
She checked the shelf she reserved for ready meals, found a lasagna, and tossed it into the microwave.
While that was heating up, and the dogs were still eating, she went to her bedroom, stripped, and had a quick shower. The microwave was beeping when she got out.
Donning her robe, she returned to the kitchen and took the lasagna out, sliding the hot plastic container onto a plate and placing it onto the kitchen counter.
While the food cooled, she went back to the bedroom and put on an old pair of jeans and a dark green knitted jumper.
The dogs had finished eating now, and were waiting for her by the front door, tails thumping on the floor.
“Let me eat my tea,” she told them. “Then we’ll go for a nice, long walk.”
She needed to get out in the fresh air to clear her head. A long walk over the moors with Barney and Jack was the best self-care routine she knew, and the dogs loved it.
She ate the lasagna quickly and put her hiking boots on. The dogs, sensing what was coming, wheeled around crazily near the wall hook from which their leads hung.
Dani attached the leads to the dogs’ collars and took Barney and Jack outside and across the road to the moors.
Once there, she released them and trudged over the grass and heather as they ran all over the place, following her in a haphazard fashion that involved returning to her side every few minutes before dashing off again and chasing each other in circles.
Dani breathed in the fresh, cool air and tried to take her mind off the case. It was difficult, especially with David Goddard missing, but she reminded herself that her colleagues were out there looking for him. There was nothing more she could do until she was back on duty tomorrow. And by then, David might even have been found.
The question Gallow had been asked on the radio came back to her.
Do the police hope to find the boy alive? Or are you looking for a—
Gallow had interrupted before the reporter had said, “body,” and assured everyone at the press conference, and everyone listening, that the police were indeed hoping to find David Goddard alive.
What we wish for and what we get are two different things, Dani’s mother used to say to her when she was a child. She hoped the sentiment wasn’t proved true where David Goddard was concerned.
She kept wondering why the man who poisoned the Goddards would take David from the house and not leave him to suffer the same fate as the rest of his family. Such things were more in Tony’s purview than her own, but it bothered her, nevertheless.
She forced herself to stop thinking about it, especially when her mind went to some dark places, and concentrated instead on the dogs and the moors.
She got home almost two hours later, returning to a dark house. She switched the lights on and built a fire in the fireplace, which the dogs immediately lay in front of. They were exhausted, and so was Dani.
She poured herself a glass of wine and sat in front of the window, watching as darkness crept across the landscape.
If David was still alive—and she had to believe that he was—he would probably be feeling even more afraid as the night drew in. She wondered if he knew what had happened to his parents and siblings.
As the moors became lost to darkness, she whispered a silent prayer. “Please let him be alive.”
CHAPTER
SIX
When Tony got back to his flat, Alina was in the kitchen, making spaghetti bolognese. He’d rung her and told her he was on his way, and it looked like she’d jumped into action immediately. She was stirring the spaghetti in one pan while making the sauce in another.
The kitchen smelled of basil, tomatoes, onions, and oregano, making Tony’s mouth water.
“Something smells good,” he said, dropping his notebook on the counter. He leaned down and kissed Alina.
“What’s good is you being back at a reasonable hour,” she said, giving the sauce another stir before transferring a tray of garlic bread from the counter to the oven.
“Battle sent us home. Well, some of us. He’s got the Force working round the clock in shifts.”
“I heard about the missing boy. That’s terrible, Tony. I can’t imagine how scared he is.” She looked genuinely upset and that was one of the things Tony loved about her; she was always sympathetic to other people’s plights. She had a big heart, which sometimes surprised him, especially considering she worked in a field which often hardened people’s emotions.
“I’m sure we’ll find him,” he said, to reassure her if nothing else. On his way home, he’d heard Gallow tell the press they expected to find David Goddard alive, but he knew that was simply to keep the media happy. Gallow knew as well as anyone else that the chances of finding anything other than David’s body were slim.
“I hope so,” Alina said.
“So do I.” Despite his fear that David was already dead, he hoped with all his heart that the boy would be found safe and well, even if experience told him that was an unlikely outcome.
“I don’t understand why he would take a child.” Alina was stirring the sauce again, adding a pinch of salt and fresh, chopped basil.
“Children are taken all the time,” Tony said.
“Yes, but this person isn’t like that, is he? It seems to me he has a grudge against the police. He’s killed four children already. He didn’t take them. So why is David different?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s probably because David was simply an inconvenience. This guy seems to be targeting families that consist of two children. The Goddards had three, so the math was wrong. David was simply surplus to requirements.”
“Tony, that’s a horrible thing to say! He is a child. A living, human being.”
“I’m only telling you how our killer thinks. At least, I’m fairly sure that’s how he thinks. I don’t know yet.” He felt suddenly weary. It had been a long day and the deaths he’d witnessed were affecting him even more than he’d anticipated. It seemed like every time he closed his eyes, he saw the Goddard family choking on poison.
“Are you okay, Tony?” Alina touched his shoulder gently and looked into his eyes as if assessing his mental state. “You don’t look okay.”
“It’s been a long day,” he said.
“Sit down,” she said. “Dinner won’t be long.”
“I think I’ll have a shower first and get changed.”
“Of course. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He nodded. “I’ll be fine. There’s a bottle of red somewhere. Why don’t you open it and let it breathe?”
He went into the bathroom and ran the shower, dialling the temperature up as hot as he could stand it. Undressing quickly and getting in, he gasped when the spray hit him like a thousand hot needles against his skin. When he was sure he couldn’t stand it any longer, he turned the dial to cold.
He let out a breath as the suddenly-cold water hit his skin and made him shiver.
This was a technique he’d learned long ago to bring his thoughts into the present moment. It didn’t cleanse the other stuff from his mind, but it helped him focus on the here and now for a while.
He turned off the water and dried himself quickly before padding naked to the bedroom and putting on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt that had the logo of a motorbike company on the front. He wasn’t sure why he’d bought it; he didn’t even know how to ride a motorbike.
Alina was dishing out the pasta when he returned to the kitchen.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, realising that he did feel a bit better. “More refreshed.”
“Good. Now, sit down and I will pour the wine.”
He took a seat and looked at the dish in front of him. The smells coming from his plate were amazing.
“One day, I will make you sarmale and mãmãligã,” she said, pouring the wine and sitting down at the table with him.
“I’d really like that,” he said, pushing his fork into the spaghetti on his plate and twisting it. “I have absolutely no idea what those are, but I’m assuming they’re Romanian.”
She grinned. “Yes, they’re Romanian. My mother taught me how to make them and I have a secret family recipe.”
“Well, if they’re anything like this bolognese, I can’t wait. It’s delicious.”
“Thank you. I’m just glad we get to share it together. I must thank Stewart sometime, for sending you home for the evening. How is he, anyway? I have not seen him for a while.”
“As cranky as ever.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I never found him to be that way.”
“You only had to deal with him at the morgue. You weren’t taking direct orders from him.”
“I am sure he is not that bad.”
“No, I suppose not. He’s just passionate about his job and sometimes that comes out as anger directed at those around him.”
“You have psychoanalysed him?”
“Of course. I psychoanalyse everyone. It’s a habit.”
“Even me?”
He smiled. “Especially you.”
“And what have you learned?”
“That you’re a wonderful cook.”
“That is not what I meant. You’re not playing fair.”
“Playing? So that’s all my job is to you? A game?” He tried to look offended but couldn’t pull it off because he was laughing too much.
“Now you’re twisting my words.” She made a pouting expression that was greatly exaggerated and that made him laugh even more.
“All right,” he said, relenting, “I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from psychoanalysing you. You’re a beautiful person, both inside and out.”
“No, tell me something real.”
“That is real.”
“Something bad.”
“Bad?”
“We all have psychological issues, don’t we? What is one of mine?”
He had to think hard to find one. Alina really was one of the most balanced people he’d ever come across.
“Come on, Tony. There must be something.”
“All right. You have a preoccupation with death.”
“I’m an anthropologist. I’m supposed to have a preoccupation with death.”
“True, but you seem fascinated with it, sometimes. And not just in a work context. Yesterday, we walked past a dead pigeon on the pavement, and you stopped to have a good look at it.”
“The dead can tell us so much about how they lived. You’re right. I am fascinated.”
“In a pigeon?”
“Just because it is a pigeon does not mean it isn’t worthy of our attention. This particular pigeon had a scar on its right leg, maybe from a fight with another pigeon some time ago. It was missing a toe on its left foot, probably because there was a hairdresser’s shop across the road. And it was killed by a cat, if you’re interested.”
“Wait a minute. Hairdresser? What’s that got to do with a pigeon’s missing toe?” He spun his fork through the spaghetti and slid the captured strands through the rich sauce before pushing them into his mouth.
“A study was done in Paris,” she said, “and it was discovered that the more hairdressers there are in an area, the more missing toes the pigeons in the area will have.”
Tony frowned in confusion. “I don’t see the correlation.”
“Strands of hair escape from the shop into the environment. Some of them get wrapped around pigeons’ toes and cut off the circulation. The toes eventually fall off.”
Tony took a sip of wine. “You know too many weird things.”
“The dead can tell us their stories, Tony. They are not weird; they are interesting. That pigeon lived a full life just outside this window and we did not know anything about it until it died and told us of its life. That is beautiful.”
He’d never looked at it like that before. Alina had a different way of seeing things that made him re-evaluate his own thought patterns. Was he too stuck in his ways? He didn’t see beauty in dead pigeons or dead people. He just saw death.
An image came unbidden into his mind’s eye. It was one he often remembered without meaning to and he wished he could forget it.
“Tony, what are you thinking?” Alina looked concerned.
“Nothing.” He wished it was nothing.
“No, it is not nothing. I have seen that expression before. You are thinking of him, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
“The Lake Erie Ripper.”
He decided to come clean. He didn’t want to lie to her. “I was remembering the moment I slipped into his house. What I saw there.”
“You should not think of such things if they upset you.”
“Those girls,” he said. In his mind, he was no longer in his kitchen in York. He was entering a house in a small town called Lakeshore near Lake St. Clair in Canada. “Their bodies told stories too. But they were ugly stories that ended in tragedy.”
She got up and came around the table to him, stroking his forehead as he stared down at the plate of spaghetti in front of him.
