A slight pause from the officers behind me. “But sir, we’ve as good as got him now—”

  “You heard what I said. Leave him to me.”

  The hands holding me loosened. Lenny walked up to me, grabbed hold of my right arm with his bony fingers.

  “Come on, sir,” he said, pulling me back out the door.

  “Your flies are undone, sir,” I said.

  The office erupted in laughter. Lenny blushed, looked down at his flies, and quickly rearranged. He looked back at me, jaw shaking and eyes bloodshot, like he was considering bollocking me right there.

  It was nice to feel I had something of the upper hand in this case for once.

  Lenny dragged me out and bundled me into the lost property room at the other side of the desk.

  “Are you gonna tell me what this is about, Blakey? Walking into our offices like that? Making me look a fool?”

  “I think you do a decent enough job of that without my help.”

  “Watch it, or you’ll be getting £100,000.”

  I held the papers out in front of me.

  “Oh I dunno about that,” I said.

  Lenny looked at the papers, then at me. “What… what’ve you got there?”

  I flicked through the papers. Wondered whether this was going to work, whether Lenny was dumb enough to take the bait. “Only the answer to the entire case.”

  Lenny’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit. On a piece of paper? Like, all written out for you? Diaries of a Killer, Volume One?”

  I shrugged. Put the papers back under my arm. “You don’t have to look if you don’t want to.”

  Lenny looked away. Wiped a finger’s breadth of dust off the old VCR player stacked behind him.

  I had him. I knew I had him.

  “Go on then,” he said. “I’ll take a look.”

  “It’ll cost you one million.”

  “Bullshit. We discussed—”

  “One million, like we agreed. Or the killer kills someone else and you have a right old mess on your hands.”

  Lenny’s serious face flickered into a smile. “So you want to go to prison, do you? Want to spend a lifetime in a cell with Brutus? He’s big, hairy, and he likes asshole. He likes asshole a lot.”

  “You can send me wherever you want,” I said. I was speaking on adrenaline now, the words flowing out of me like a menthol-inspired symphony. “And you can haunt me about Grace Wallens and 2007 forever. Because I accept it. I accept what I did was wrong. I was hired to capture a serial fraudster and con artist, yes. I fell in love with her, yes.” My throat welled up with the weight of what I was about to say. “And because I didn’t bring her in on the night I was supposed to, she—she was murdered. Murdered by someone she stole from, yes.”

  I saw Grace in my mind. Saw her blonde hair, her pretty smile, as she lay beside me.

  “But I didn’t kill her. I didn’t murder her. I’m guilty of anything but that. So you give me the million—the million you promised me before this whole thing started—or I take these documents and I put them through that frigging ancient shredder behind you.”

  Lenny looked pale. He scratched at his neck, struggled for words. “What’s… what’s stopping me arresting you? Taking those documents from you right—right now?”

  I smiled. Shook my head.

  “Don’t be fucking dumb, Lenny. You’ve no idea how easily I could take you down with me. No idea how many recordings I might have of our conversations over the years.”

  Lenny went even more pale. Seemed to go a little grey in the space of a few seconds, too.

  Yes, I was bluffing, and yes, an intelligent officer might’ve recognised that.

  Fortunately for all parties concerned, Lenny wasn’t intelligent.

  “Fine. A million. But that’s it. A million and we’re done. Not having you recording any more weird tracks of me.”

  I nodded. “I’ve recorded that too, just so you know. In case you go against your word. Wouldn’t want my friends paying you a visit now, would you?”

  Lenny couldn’t hold eye contact with me, not anymore.

  “So—so what’ve you got?” he asked.

  I placed the documents on the table, my heart picking up again at the urgency of the situation.

  “I found this over at the court. Don’t ask how, but I found it.”

  Lenny scanned it. Ran his finger down the names. “This is… these are the people who’ve been murdered.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “This… Melissa Waters. She must be the first victim.”

  Wow. Lenny was on form today. “I believe so.”

  He scanned the document some more. Scanned it, muttered under his breath, like he was adding up what it all meant in his little peanut brain.

  “Jed Chipps,” he said.

  “Jed Chipps indeed. Heard of him?”

  Lenny sighed. He looked up at me. “I… I arrested him.”

  “Arrested him? What… what for?”

  Lenny’s face went so pale that I swore he was going to barf in the next few seconds. Hopefully not all over the frigging important documents.

  “He… It was a few years ago now. 2010, I think. Wife reported him for violent behaviour towards her and her kid.”

  Nerves jangled through my stomach. “Were the wife and kid called Jenny and Daley, by any chance?”

  More paleness on Lenny’s face, as he nodded. “He… These names. These people. These are the people on the jury of his sentencing. His prosecutor. He…”

  “What happened with his wife and kid in the end?”

  Lenny shook his head. “I—I don’t remember the ins and outs but… but they put a restraining order out. I remember that because I locked him in a cell again last year when he’d been released. First thing he did was… was go to Jenny’s house and demand to see his kid.”

  The pieces of the puzzle were adding up in my mind.

  Adding up, and making me feel pretty sick in the process.

  “You don’t think he’s… he’s carrying out revenge killings, do you?” Lenny asked. “Of all the people who—who stood against him?”

  I looked back down at the papers. Looked at the names, Jenny Chipps and Daley Chipps.

  “We need to get down to Jenny’s house right away,” I said.

  Lenny nodded like I was his superior. “63 Moss House Avenue. I… I think you’re probably right.”

  I lifted my phone out of my pocket and went to leave the lost property room. Hovered over Martha’s name, my hand shaking.

  “He wouldn’t kill his wife and kid, would he?” Lenny asked. “Like… who would do that?”

  I listened to the dialling tone ring. I wanted to tell Lenny that nobody would do that, because it was sick, it was wrong.

  But I couldn’t.

  “I think Jed Chipps might if we don’t get to Jenny and Daley right away.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Jed Chipps leaves his house feeling fresher than ever.

  He heads down Moss House Avenue. Looks at all the trees, all the green leaves, the sun shining down brightly. It is a beautiful day. A beautiful day for the conclusion of his journey. A perfect day to complete his puzzle.

  He looks at the bungalows at either side of the road. Looks at the well-kept gardens, the fountains and features in each and every one of them, like the neighbours were having some kind of competition.

  He smiles, takes in a deep breath of his minty air fresheners, and he feels alive.

  He hasn’t been down Moss House Avenue for quite some time. Not since a restraining order was placed on him by that bastard prosecutor, Pete Adkins. And his kid, Daley… he hadn’t wrapped his arms around him, tucked him into bed, since that twattish jury all voted in favour of his imprisonment.

  His skin heats up at the memory. Those evil bastards, interfering in his life, pretending they knew him. And sure, he did knock Jenny around a bit. And okay, okay, he might have given her one too many black eyes, might’ve tightened his hand around her throat until she was blue during sex a couple of times.

  But he was just letting off steam. Letting off steam is better than the alternative.

  Well, for anyone but him, anyway.

  Killing is a very fitting alternative.

  He slows down as he approaches number sixty-three. It’s 7.45, so Jenny and Daley will probably still be in bed. Or just getting out of bed, eating their breakfast.

  Anything is fine by him. As long as they are home.

  If they aren’t, well… He’ll find another way. He is in way too deep to worry about the technicalities.

  His hand shakes and he plucks at the steering wheel, his body craving for a release. He has been this way as long as he can remember. Even when he was a young kid in primary school, he enjoyed locking his classmates into cubicles, shoving their heads down the toilet while they spluttered away.

  Animals were his first passion, though. He started small, tearing the legs off spiders, one by one.

  And then he moved onto rats, field mice, pet hamsters. While his whore mum fucked whichever random man she’d let between her slutty legs and creaked on the bed, he snipped at the rodents’ little paws, made them squeal.

  He smiles. He’s always liked cutting, whether with knives or scissors. He’s always liked squealers, too.

  His love for squealers intensified when he stuffed a sharp kitchen knife into his drunken Mummy’s chest one night.

  The way she’d howled, as she tumbled down the stairs and broke her neck.

  The way she squealed…

  He stops the car. Stares through the window of the bungalow. He can’t see any movement inside. But there is a car in the drive, a red Astra, so he knows someone is home.

  He wonders for a moment whether Jenny has a new husband. Whether she’s given Daley a new daddy.

  He kind of hopes so. He’s looking forward to making someone else bleed.

  He takes a few deep breaths. Lets the mintiness of the air fresheners calm him down. He doesn’t understand why he is feeling so much anxiety. Then again, he’s always struggled differentiating between anxiety and excitement.

  He’d realised that back when he attached some crocodile cables to his nipples in the high school toilets. Masturbated while blood and pus seeped out of his teets.

  “Dangerous,” Jenny had called him. “A threat to your own child,” the prosecutor and the jury had echoed.

  He chuckles. He chuckles because soon, everyone will know who he is. How dangerous he is.

  People might think more carefully before stripping a father of his child in future.

  He opens the car door without looking left or right, without even lifting his hood up. There’s no need for him to be anonymous anymore. There is no need to hide.

  He only has three pieces of the puzzle left.

  Three pieces, then everyone will understand.

  Two of those pieces are in this bungalow.

  He approaches the side door. He doesn’t see anybody in the kitchen. For a moment, he panics. Wonder if maybe Jenny might be out, or if that slippery bitch might’ve stayed at some fake husband’s house.

  His nerves are calmed when he hears her soft voice.

  “Get your bag packed, Daley,” she says. “Don’t want to be late for the zoo.”

  Her voice is just as he remembers. It eases him even more. Makes him think about the times he spent with Jenny on the beach, rubbing his hands through her smooth hair, pressing his lips against hers, staring into her inviting blue eyes.

  Six years and the bitch never realised he couldn’t really give two shits about her. Looks really were deceiving.

  He places a hand on the bronze door handle. Hopes to God Jenny is still just as complacent with her door-locking as she used to be. Not that it’s a problem if she isn’t—He can always just ring the doorbell.

  He turns the handle.

  The door opens.

  He can’t stop myself smiling as he steps inside his wife’s kitchen. As he inhales that homely smell that used to welcome him back from work every day. He looks on the walls, see a calendar hanging up from 2009. A calendar with birds on that she has been recycling for five years.

  Always was a cheap bitch.

  He steps through the kitchen. He can hear her rustling in the lounge, Jenny shaking the contents of her handbag as she searches for her car keys. Always losing them, she was. Always losing them, then whining at him with that cunty voice.

  That cunty voice that he’s going to silence forever.

  He moves into the hallway. Feels the soft cream carpet under his feet. On the walls, there are pictures of my boy. Pictures of Daley, looking all grown-up, with his curly brown hair. On one of them, he is wearing his Bolton Wanderers kit.

  He walks up to this photograph. Rubs his thumb against it. He can feel something welling up in his eyes. Tastes salt on his lips.

  All the years he’s lost.

  All the years with his son that his bitch wife, those bastard prosecutors and that idiot jury took away from him.

  Because he’d never lay a finger on Daley. He cares about Daley. Daley is the only person, the only thing beside killing, he ever cared about.

  Oh well. He’ll have all the time in the world to spend with him soon.

  He turns to walk into the lounge and he freezes.

  Jenny is standing at the door. She is wearing a black t-shirt and tight blue jeans, and carries a black leather bag over her shoulder. A bag that he bought the bitch all those years ago.

  Her eyes are wide. Her dark hair is darker than he remembers. Dyed black.

  Trashy whore. Always was.

  They stand and stare at one another in silence.

  He gets hard when he see the tears well up in her eyes, when he sees her cheeks blushing, like they always used to when she knew he was going to beat her.

  “Jed, what—”

  “Don’t make a sound, Jenny. Not yet.”

  He pulls the long combat knife out of his pocket and steps towards Jenny.

  “You might want to save your vocal cords for the next part.”

  FORTY

  “Does this thing seriously not go any faster?”

  “Jesus, Blake. Give me a chance here. There’s speed limits on the road. Rules to adhere to.”

  I bit my lip as I sat in the passenger seat of Lenny’s Mini Cooper, which smelled of coffee and rotting fruit. “Aren’t there rules? Police officer rules you can avoid on the speed limit? I’m sure there are rules.”

  Lenny shrugged. “Come on, Blakey. You know me well enough by now. You actually expect me to have a bloody clue?”

  I tilted my head. “Valid point.”

  I rubbed my hands together as we approached Moss House Avenue. Looked at the digital clock on Lenny’s dashboard. Eight-fifteen a.m. I felt like I was preparing for the biggest exam of my life. I wasn’t sure why nerves were circling my stomach so much. Jed Chipps wasn’t necessarily at his wife’s house just as Lenny and I discovered he was the killer.

  But there were only two names left on that court document. Two names left on his list.

  I thought back to what Jed told me after he’d slashed a knife across my face.

  “Let me get on with my work…”

  “I’ll be finished soon…”

  “The answers are written already… You’re just not looking in the right places.”

  Somehow, I didn’t think Jed Chipps was going to slow his pace all of a sudden.

  “Take a left down here,” I said.

  “Alright, alright. Calm yourself. We just walk to the door, check Mrs Chipps and Chipps Junior are okay, then we give them a nice little ride to protective custody once backup gets here.”

  “And then what?”

  Lenny shrugged again. “We wait and hope ol’ Jebadiah Chipps shows up with a bloodlust right in time for a heavily armed team to catch him.”

  Lenny turned down Moss House Avenue.

  “Honestly, Blake. I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s not like he’s just gonna turn up the second we…”

  He stopped talking.

  I saw what he saw a split second later.

  “Oh shit,” he said.

  Jed Chipps’ Land Rover was parked on the pavement outside Number 63.

  “Plan B?” I asked.

  Lenny slowed down. Pulled up just behind Jed’s Land Rover. Both of us craned our necks, tried to look through Jenny Chipps’ lounge window, but it was no good.

  “I’ll call for backup. We need to take this seriously. Jed Chipps is a very dangerous man. We don’t want to do anything stupid here.”

  I lifted my phone and called Martha. Quickly explained the situation and told her to get her lazy butt down to Moss House Avenue. I wasn’t sure what good Martha being here might be, but I figured I might need her for backup of my own, just in case Lenny the slimeball tried anything too crafty.

  Besides, I had plans of my own.

  “So we just wait here?” I said. “Wait here while—while Jed could be doing anything to his wife? To his son?”

  Lenny shook his head. “Oh don’t get all conspiracy theory on me. Backup’s on the way. The best option is to hold our position. To not get involved and… and risk being gutted in the process.”

  “Just leave the other guys to deal with it, right?”

  Lenny smiled. “Right. Not keen on getting any scars on my pretty face any time soon… Hey! Where are you going?”

  I jolted out of Lenny’s car. Slammed the door shut without responding. I could hear him protesting, hear him shaking around, but I let him.

  He could follow me or he could wait in the car.

  I was going inside, whether he liked it or not.

  I couldn’t just sit and wait for backup when a murdering nutbag could be torturing his wife in her own home.

  Call it growing a conscience, or whatever. It just felt like the morally right thing to do.

  Damn. “Morally right.” Who am I?

  I jogged down Jenny Chipps’ driveway, loose tarmac kicking up under my feet. I approached the back door. Saw it was slightly ajar, which made my stomach weigh down like I’d swallowed a bag of stones.

  Jed Chipps was inside.

  I pushed through into the kitchen. Looked around, oriented myself with the place.