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Marsh flicks cigarette ash onto the mud next to him. “If you’re going to hide when you’re off duty, Bishop, you need to find somewhere else to go. You’re not a shadowy man of mystery; you’re as predictable as the rest of us. Why do you go there anyway?” Marsh takes another drag. “You’re not going to find the woman of your dreams at some sleazy bar full of twenty-year-olds.”
“It’s not like that.”
Marsh snorts. “Well, whatever. Good for you, Bishop. Living your best life.”
Dr. Ross returns. He nods to Marsh as he passes but ignores Adam. “Still making friends everywhere you go then,” Marsh finishes sarcastically, flicking his butt to the ground and following the pathologist.
Adam watches his boss leave as he smokes the cigarette to the filter. The two older men are almost indistinguishable as they get into the crime scene gear, Ross for the second time. Both are tall and slim—although Adam knows Marsh’s figure is due to a lack of food and a surfeit of nicotine and caffeine, while Ross is the paragon of fitness, clean eating, and exercise. In the distance, Adam can make out Jamie, his DS an altogether larger silhouette, happily settled with his wife of two weeks. Adam remembers what that’s like: the pleasure of letting standards slip. Cozy nights on the sofa with home-cooked roast dinners and a family sized bar of Dairy Milk.
A shout from Jamie rouses Adam from his thoughts. He flicks his butt away from the cordon and goes to join him.
“That’s five,” his DS says. The handlers are taking the dogs home, tails wagging on receipt of their rewards.
“And we’re sure that’s all?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Jamie replies.
Adam nods grimly. Separate sites are being constructed now: individual crime scenes for each ugly discovery. Floodlights and figures mark each one, careful to avoid cross-contamination. Five bodies, in varying states of decay. Five people who were once someone, who loved and were loved and cared for.
But despite this, Adam feels a wave of apprehension. A small thrill of the challenge he’s facing. He’s dealt with more murders than he can count. Domestics gone wrong, pub fights ending badly, even one tragic infanticide. But nothing like this.
This is big.
Because written above all the bodies are the same spray-painted numerals. Adam doesn’t need a pathologist to work it out. Number sixteen is almost fully decomposed, gnawed to the quick by the feasting rats, some bones disappeared, taken away to a hole somewhere for further attention. Number twelve—the body found today—still in the early stages of putrefaction.
Adam knows it, Jamie knows it. DCS Marsh knows it, or he wouldn’t be here.
The killer is counting down.
This is just the beginning.
CHAPTER
3
BEFORE BED, SHE goes through the same routine. Check each door—chain on the front, double-lock the back. All the windows closed. Turn off the lights, one by one, but not until she is out of the room, still bathed in the puddle of light from the next. Ensure that the plug-in LEDs have come on. Reassuring and bright.
By the time she makes it to the bedroom, Phil is usually under the covers. She envies the simplicity of his life. Tonight, she can tell by his breathing that he’s nearly asleep. Slow, secure, steady. She turns the nightlight on next to her bed; it’s a kid’s one, but what she needs. It throws stars up at the ceiling, dousing the bedroom in a cool blue glow.
She turns the main light off and gets into bed next to her boyfriend. He rolls over and pulls her close, his arm around her middle, one leg entwined with hers. Safe.
* * *
When she wakes, she knows instantly something is wrong. She can sense the darkness, covering everything, deep and suffocating. She opens her eyes. There’s nothing. Her breathing quickens. The nightlight is off; the room is pitch-black. Her hands grope outward, looking for Phil, but she only touches cold sheets.
And in a flash, she’s back there. Alone, in the darkness. Sounds from outside the window: the hoot of an owl, the screech of a fox. Then something else. Something animal, but undoubtably human. A cry, a scream of pain. Anguish and fear.
She lies frozen in her bed. Her hands claw at the duvet; she blinks, trying to force her eyes to see something, anything, in the darkness. At last, she conjures up the strength to reach across to her bedside table. Her fingers come into contact with the flex of the wire from her lamp, then the plastic switch, and she flicks it. But nothing. Nothing. She starts to whimper. Quiet at first, getting louder until she is screaming. Taking in great gulps of breath, then screaming again.
Suddenly, she feels a body next to hers. Strong hands on her arms. A flashlight switched on and swung around the room.
“Rom! Romilly,” the voice is saying. “I’m here now, I’m sorry. There’s a power cut. I’m sorry.”
She grabs at her boyfriend’s arm and the light, her salvation, comes with him. He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight.
“I’m sorry,” Phil says again. “I shouldn’t have left you. I went to get the flashlight.” He pulls her closer, dragging the duvet up over them, cocooning them in the bed. “There, is that better?” he asks softly, and she curls up against his chest, her tears soaking his T-shirt.
She holds the flashlight in her hand, the strong stream of light illuminating the bedroom. Her bedroom. Not then, but now.
