He thinks of Blake Dent. Thinks of his he-she companion.

  He’d sworn he wouldn’t deviate. Sworn he wouldn’t step off the path after last time’s failure.

  But he is so close to completing his task that a little fun along the way wouldn’t do any harm.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “This is getting all too familiar for my liking, Blakey. All too familiar indeed.”

  I was back in my definite least favourite place in the world—the interview room at the police station. The station had reopened after the explosion, much to the dismay of everyone who wasn’t an officer. I’d been sitting in silence for a good two, three hours, phone confiscated and without a glass of water until Lenny showed up.

  Then again, I’d rather go frigging thirsty than get another telling off from Lenny.

  It was just him and me now. He sat at the opposite side of the grey table, in the grey room, which smelled of… grey, weirdly. If grey had a smell, this is exactly what grey would smell like.

  He fanned out several sheets of paper. Sheets of paper that I had no idea what they were, and no doubt Lenny had no clue either. It was probably supposed to just look good. Look professional. Something that Lenny could never pull off no matter how damned hard he tried.

  “Then let me go,” I said.

  Lenny smiled. Shook his head. Showed off those ultra-white teeth, his fringe flopping over his forehead. “You know I can’t do that. One strike is a strike. Two strikes is… it’s a pretty big deal.”

  I leaned back. Caressed my temples. They’d even taken my frigging Tunes away, which was the worst part of this entire sham.

  “So let me get this straight,” Lenny said, frowning as he read through these mystery papers. “You’re wandering across the street. Wandering away from Groovy Smoothie’s nice little court case—which I hope went well, by the way.”

  “It was postponed.”

  “Postponed. Right. Hopefully it was a good postponement rather than a bad postponement—”

  “Just get on with it.”

  Lenny leaned back. Stretched out his arms until his shoulders cracked.

  “I’ll take as long as I need, Blake. As long as I need.”

  He waited a few seconds before talking again, as if to prove his point.

  “So you’re wandering across the street. Wandering away from—”

  “We’ve covered this part—”

  “Right. And you see a Land Rover. You see a Land Rover. What’s so funny about this Land Rover?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Rubbed them with my fingers. “I heard ‘Walking On Sunshine’ playing. Like you said, a Land Rover was playing down by—”

  “You heard ‘Walking On Sunshine’ playing. On a sunny day.”

  He waited.

  “Yes. And the car it—there was something off. Something wasn’t right.”

  “What wasn’t right?” Lenny asked.

  It was my turn to pause, mainly ‘cause I didn’t know what the hell I was going to say.

  “I… Air fresheners. Minty air fresheners. Lots of them.”

  Lenny’s smile twitched, and then he pouted and whistled. “Oooh, minty air fresheners. I mean, ‘Walking On Sunshine,’ a Land Rover, and minty air fresheners? Jesus Christ, Blake. You’ll be telling me there was a load of fishing tackle in the boot next! Oh… oh wait. Please tell me there wasn’t any fishing tackle in the boot.”

  I shook my head. “Something wasn’t right. I did what you’re paying me to do.”

  “I’m paying you to pursue leads. I’m paying you to do the dirty work and catch a killer. And you can call us inept for that reason—call us weak or stupid or whatever you want—but the difference between you and me is I don’t go storming into Land Rovers when I hear a bloody song playing.”

  “You don’t go storming into anything. That’s why you hired me in the first place—”

  “D’you know what we could do to people like you, Blake? You know what we could do if—say we did send you down for your little murderous escapade back in 2007. You know, there’s plenty of ways we could dance around the actual information. Make out as if you did something a little more, say… punishable, in prison. And say you were convicted of something, I dunno, like kiddie fiddling. Do you know how people would treat you in prison?”

  I never felt intimidated by Lenny. Lenny and intimidation were two concepts that just did not go hand in hand.

  But I knew he had the upper hand here. I knew that, by some bastarding piece of misfortunate, I was the man who needed to do his job, or I was the man who was going to pay by being locked away.

  I wasn’t sure whether Lenny was telling the truth about how he could change the details of sentencing. But judging by the amount of police corruption I’d witnessed in my time, I didn’t want to call his bluff.

  Lenny placed the papers on top of one another. Leaned forward, that annoying-as-hell smile still wide on his face.

  “When we found Grace Wallens, do you want to know how she looked?”

  Her name made goose pimples rise along my arms. I chewed at my tongue, wished it were filled with menthol.

  “Her head was so caved in that we couldn’t recognise her, not at first.”

  I tasted sick. I needed to get out of here. Needed to get away.

  “But d’you know how we identified her? How we worked out who the poor girl was right away?”

  I made a point of looking away. Made a point of getting the image of Grace out of my head.

  Made a bad point of it.

  “She told us. Because even though her head was caved in, even though her skull was the shape of a burst football that’d been kicked at too much, she was still alive. Spluttering blood, teeth all knocked out, but alive—”

  “What the fuck do you want from me?” I shouted.

  It took me a second to realise I was on my feet. My skin prickled with heat. I could taste saltiness on my lips—the saltiness of tears, tears that couldn’t be mine, no way could they be mine.

  Lenny had leaned back. Leaned back, like the weak little parasite he was. He raised his hands. “Hey, Blake. I was just being dramatic. Just doing what they do in films, and all that. I mean, everything I said was true, but—”

  “If you want to arrest me for what I’ve done, arrest me. Because I know I’ve done wrong. Every frigging day, I blot it out of my mind, but it catches up with me at some point. So arrest me, or let me go and do my job. The job you gave me.”

  Lenny tilted his head either side. Mulled what I said over for a few seconds.

  “Okay. I think you’re right, Blake. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that crap up. Must be a nightmare living with demons that big. Think I’d have topped myself years ago if I’d been responsible.”

  I tensed my jaw as he patted me on the back. Resisted the urge to kick him in the balls.

  “You’re right. You should go home. But I er… You should probably know that you’ll only be getting two-hundred and fifty K now.”

  It took me a few seconds to process what Lenny had said. I turned and squared up to him. “You what? A quarter of… why?”

  Lenny raised his hands. “Let’s call it an incentive. A little slappy-on-the-wristy for all your screw-ups—”

  “You promised me a million. We shook on it.”

  Lenny shrugged. “A million, half a million, quarter of a million. It’s all good money. And I know how much you like your money. Anyway, it’s that or… well I’m sure we have a decent enough cell waiting for you in Preston jail.”

  I pictured £750,000 of the million slipping down a toilet. Saw the £250,000, saw Martha taking half of it, leaving me with £125,000. Saw that £125,000 becoming £120,000 when Martha paid off her goon arms contact.

  One hundred and twenty frigging thousand. Barely enough to cover the cost of a new flat.

  Lenny stepped up to me. Short-ass bastard stared up at me, smirk on his face, getting off on the power.

  “You follow my lead, Blake. Follow my lead, like a good little boy, and you do your homework on the side. None of this gung-ho shit, because that just gets people sniffing around you, which in turn gets people sniffing around the police.”

  “What’s stopping me reporting you?” I asked. Cheap shot, but he’d had plenty of his own.

  Lenny’s smile didn’t even twitch. “Because we’re friends, Blakey. Friends, me and you. Working pals for a long, long time—”

  The interview room door swung open. A female officer with short dark hair stormed in, panting like she’d run a marathon.

  “DS Emerson? What’ve you got for me?”

  Emerson got her breath. Gulped. “We’ve… There’s another body, Kole. Another… another body matching the MO.”

  Lenny looked at me and I looked back at him, my heart picking up.

  “Where is she? What’s… when did you find her?”

  DS Emerson shook her head. Panted some more.

  “Not ‘she,’ Detective Inspector. It’s a ‘he.’”

  THIRTY-TWO

  The worst part about being in Lenny’s bad books is the part where he tells you to “go investigate.”

  Go investigate. Right. Go investigate while you go investigate the body of a fourth victim and leave me carless, in the middle of the city centre, without a penny to spare.

  I walked through town—everyone in Preston still calls it “town” despite it being a city. I walked down the main street, away from the police station and in the direction of Martha’s place. It’d take a good thirty, forty minutes to walk there, but I figured I could do with the exercise. Besides, it was still only eleven a.m. I’m usually just getting round to breakfast at this point.

  Besides, I needed some time to think. Think about Lenny’s revised “offer” of £250,000. Think about the fourth body found—a man, apparently, over at the Brockon Fell Nature Park. Think about everything but Grace. Everything but Lenny’s description of her when they found her dying in that alleyway…

  No. You can’t think about her like that. He’s just messing with you. Screwing with you.

  All I could do was wait for a phone call from Lenny and walk back to Martha’s. That was the messed-up thing about this whole case—Lenny was paying me good money to catch a killer, and then he was telling me to back off and let the police solve the mystery. I could see a pattern forming. See what he was doing. He was trying to lower my price. Bring it right down. Bring my price down while I carried on finding clues, putting pieces of the mystery together.

  And then he was doing everything he could to make sure the police were the first to take credit for any breakthrough discovery.

  Half of me suspected the bastard wanted me locked behind bars. Fair play to him. I didn’t know he had a scheming bone in his body.

  Not that he had a moral compass. Just scheming was for smart people, and Lenny was far from smart.

  My phone vibrated when I was halfway up Blackpool Road, just around Deepdale Stadium. Unknown Caller, of course—who else but my best friend Unknown Caller?

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Blakey! Nice to hear you sounding so positive. So alive. How’s it hanging? To the—”

  “I was in your interview room about half an hour ago. You went to the nature park. What’ve you found?”

  I could hear wind in the background. “Ah yeah, of course, of course. Well check your phone in a minute or two and I’ll send a snappy over. Should I do a selfie? Selfie with the body? Or is that too weird?”

  “Probably too weird.”

  “Right. Anyway, we’ve got an ID on this dude right away. He’s in a sorry state, but the killer’s left his wallet with him. A Mr Pete Adkins. Works over at a law firm in some position or another…”

  Lenny kept on waffling on, but my mind stuck at that name.

  Mr Pete Adkins. Mr Adkins. Where had I heard that name?

  And then it clicked.

  “Wait—did you say Mr Adkins? Mr Adkins who works at the court?”

  “Alright, sunshine, keep up. Mr Adkins, yeah. I think I met the guy once or twice, actually. Always seemed reasonable enough. Never struck me as the type to attract a murderous psychopath. But hey, I never had you down as a murderer and lo and behold—”

  “He… he was late this morning. Late for my Groovy Smoothie hearing. He was… That’s why the hearing was postponed. Because he wasn’t there.”

  Lenny laughed. “Quite a coincidence. Better hope he wasn’t rooting for you, ‘cause I tell you, the only thing he’s rooting right now is maggots and bluebottles. Covered in them, he is.”

  I squeezed the bridge of my nose and tried to figure out what the hell was going on, and why the killer might’ve chosen Mr Adkins of all people as his fourth victim—if he did even have a process at all.

  “What… How was he? Just like the girls?”

  “Just like the girls,” Lenny said. “Except a bit worse, if anything. Looks like he’s had a hell of a load of flesh carved away from his belly. I mean, he was a pretty tubby guy when I saw him, not gonna lie. But he looked better with flab than he does now. What d’you think, McDone? Think he looked better with… Oh. Okay. Yeah. Later. We’ll talk later.”

  “Lenny, what do you want me to do here?”

  “What do I want you to do? Wow. Nice of you to ask, Blake. Almost like you’ve remembered the pecking order all of a sudden. Tune up your manners and wear some smarter clothes and hey—you might just turn out a valued police informant.”

  The thought of working exclusively for the police was enough to bring on another headache. “Just tell me what you want.”

  “Oh I’ll tell you what I want. I want you to go home. Have a nice sit-down and a think about what you did earlier—how reckless it was breaking into that Land Rover. How stupid it was impersonating me in front of poor old Mrs Wilfrieds yesterday. And then I want you to get your butt down to Costa Coffee so we can discuss our next step. Because finding this lawyer chap here, well, it changes things. The very presence of a penis changes things, right? I mean, it wasn’t long ago you were saying it was a bunch of escorts.”

  I wondered how long it would take Lenny to bring that up. “And… and the money. If I… If I think about my actions… can I have the million?”

  Lenny burst out laughing. Burst out into hysterical laughter, the like of which I hadn’t heard from a normal functioning human being in… well, ever.

  “Can you have the million? That’s a good one, Blake. A real good one. Ah, you comedian. You should do stand-up. Can I have the million. Hahahaha.”

  “I wasn’t joking—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Laters, Sinatra.”

  He cancelled the call.

  I wanted to dig into him for mistaking Sinatra for a comedian, but he hadn’t even given me the chance to do that.

  Lenny hate levels had just hit DEFCON 5.

  I reached the turn onto Martha’s road. Took a right, walked down it. It was a pretty nice day, in truth. Birds were all out, singing away, which was a clichéd thing to notice if ever there was one. They were shitting away, too. Shitting bullets of horrible white faeces, spraying it out all over the pavement. There—that’s a better thing to notice. A more accurate thing to notice.

  I just wanted to get back. My legs were aching and my head, well, it wasn’t used to kicking into gear before seven a.m. I thought about everything I’d have to tell Martha—the money cut, the new body.

  And I’d have to tell her about why the money was being cut, too. One of either Lenny or Martha digging into me, I could just about stand. Both of them… Well, I wondered if maybe the Big Bang was provoked by such an overload of frustration.

  I turned right again and approached Martha’s bungalow.

  That’s when I saw somebody outside.

  They were walking down Martha’s driveway. They were wearing a black hoodie and black trackie bottoms, so it was hard to see them. They had their hands stuffed in their hoodie pockets as they walked past the front door, past the side window, and into the garden…

  I picked up my pace. Sprinted down the pavement, even though it hurt my knees through lack of exercise.

  “Hey!” I shouted. Why would somebody be going into Martha’s garden? What would they want…

  My thoughts trailed off when I saw what was parked on the kerb outside Martha’s house.

  A black Land Rover.

  “Martha!” I screamed.

  I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was already too late.

  THIRTY-THREE

  He slides open the conservatory door and smiles. If the confident he-she bitch was more careful, maybe she wouldn’t have to die.

  Or maybe she wouldn’t have to die so easily, anyway.

  He hears a shout from the front of the house. Recognises the voice right away, which just makes him smile even more as he creeps across the tiles of the conservatory.

  Blake Dent.

  Oh well. It’s about time the killer dealt with him too.

  He slides the conservatory door shut. Clicks the lock, the sound of Blake’s footsteps drowned out.

  And then he turns around and he listens.

  There is nobody in the kitchen area. Nothing but filthy he-she pots, the smell of cheap microwaved food.

  He moves through the kitchen/dining area to the lounge. Looks inside.

  And he sees it sitting there watching the television.

  A bang at the front door. Blake Dent shouts, screams: “Martha! Watch out! Watch out!”

  She turns around. Not so much that she sees the killer creeping across her lounge carpet, but just slightly.

  He reaches for his sharp kitchen knife. A knife he has never killed with, but he knows is capable of the task because of how easily it pierces food packaging.

  “Martha! Let me… Let me in! Get out!”

  Poor Blake sounds confused. The killer almost pities him.

  He gets closer to Martha, who is still frozen on her sofa.

  He is three feet away when she turns around completely.

  Two feet away when her eyes widen.

  And he is on her before she can scream.