It was starting to come back. She’d been in the living room and she’d heard noises coming from the back garden but when she checked, there was nobody there. The call… she was on a call to Pia, begging her to come over. It had been the wine talking. She had been so embarrassingly drunk and sad. Who wouldn’t be sad after losing their mother, then finding out their brother had been murdered, despite how horrible he’d been? That’s it – she asked Pia to come over and then she’d heard the noise again. On reaching the back door, she spotted that a bit of the window had been broken but the door was still closed. Her heart had started hammering the moment she saw that the keys in the back door were still slightly swaying.
Earlier that day, someone had been in her house. Come to think of it, she had thought that her bag had been moved from one kitchen chair to the other.
Despite being in complete darkness, she felt the room spinning but this situation was sobering her up, fast. She kicked out at nothing, then she made a nasally noise behind the tape. She wasn’t closed in. The room sounded and felt big, echoey even. She began to half-rock in an attempt to keep warmer, then she flinched as something crawled across her face. She wanted to scream and yell. The thought of an eight-legged-freak on her face was too much. All she could do was make that useless nasally sound, over and over again. She wanted to shout,what do you want? Let me go. You can have money. Whatever you want. Just let me go.She knew she’d give the psycho imprisoning her anything in exchange for her freedom.
A shuffling sound panicked her. He was there, close enough for her to hear him move through the sound of blood in her ears and her muffled screams. Was he enjoying watching her squirm? Maybe he was wearing night-vision goggles. She’d seenThe Silence of the Lambsand thinking of that film in this moment was making everything worse. She had no way of hitting,kicking, screaming or even moving properly. She was a slave to his wants, needs and desires and she knew that murder was his endgame. She was going to end up like Kain.
She thought of Pia. Had she seen the state of the kitchen? She hoped she’d reported it. She hoped so. Blood – she had a flashback to her own blood being cast across the wall as her attacker hit her. She was about to investigate the door and look through the window to see if anyone was in the garden but the pink teddy bear on the table had distracted her. She had turned her back for a second. She scrunched her brows as she tried to remember. It had to be a man. She didn’t see him; her back was turned. He had swiped her from behind and she’d just caught that glint of blue metal, like a pole, as she fell. Before she could catch sight of him, the lights went off and she saw a glint of green in the darkness. That’s why she thought of night-vision goggles.
He must have been hiding in that cleaning cupboard while she was drinking alone in the living room. Her heartbeat thrummed. She thought she’d heard a creak coming from that cupboard earlier that day before Justine came over but she’d given herself a talking to for being ridiculous. Another image came back to her; she was swinging over a shoulder with a blindfold on and something was forced into her mouth while her attacker held it closed. Had she been thrown into the boot of a car? A pill. She’d been drugged but it wasn’t anything too strong because she was awake now. It had all happened insanely fast. Maybe it was a light muscle relaxant.
The shuffling got closer. She did all she could to keep her nausea under control and it wasn’t helping that all she could taste was stale red wine at the back of her tongue. Was he going to rape her before he killed her? Would her body remain forever trapped in this dark hell, never to be found?
The shuffling stopped came to a halt next to her and she felt something brush against her thigh.
THIRTY-FOUR
‘We’ve got Pia Yates in interview room one. Mrs Yates’s family solicitor is on her way,’ Jacob said as he came into Gina’s office.
Gina stood from her chair. ‘Great. It’s time to learn about her relationship with Craig Crawford. We need to find him. The lack of leads on that count is beyond frustrating.’ She paused. ‘Where the hell can he be?’
Jacob walked with her towards the interview room. ‘I spoke to Wyre when we got back. Garth is currently looking into Craig’s bank accounts on his laptop and he hasn’t used any of his cards for two days. He knows we’re after him.’
‘Where could he be keeping Lindy? There wasn’t too much blood at Lindy’s house and no sign of a drowning which seems to be our killer’s MO. Then again, he could be planning to drown her somewhere else.’ Gina continued talking through the modus operandi. ‘The two murder victims were drowned. Kain was killed at home, yet the killer decides to move the body. The thinking is that the killer may have planned to come back later to clean up but we got to the scene first. He made mistakes and moved on or got distracted with his plans to take Lindy. Some elements seem well planned; others seem disorganised. He killed Zavier in a disused industrial building, on location, sothere was no reason to move him. This time, with Lindy, he’s taken her offsite like he did with Kain. The perp needs a place to take her, a place where there will be no interruptions. How long had he been watching Lindy? Why was there a teddy bear at Justine’s house? At the moment my thinking is that Craig might have left it there by accident but the whole case is a confused mess.’
Jacob shrugged his shoulders and checked his beeping phone. ‘Hopefully Pia will be able to help with some of those questions now that her solicitor has arrived.’
‘I hope so. Time is against us. We need to find Lindy before the killer makes her murder victim number three.’
Gina stood outside interview room one and opened the door. Pia sat rigid against the back of the chair, both feet planted on the ground. Her clothes had been booked into evidence leaving the standard issue sweater and track bottoms swamping her petite frame. She inhaled through her nose and blew the breath out slowly through her mouth, with her eyes closed. Then she opened them. ‘I feel sick.’
Her suited solicitor whispered in Pia’s ear.
‘Do you need a moment?’ Gina asked.
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not actually going to be sick. It’s just, I can’t stop thinking about the kitchen and the blood. I keep thinking of Lindy.’ She gasped and rubbed her red-rimmed eyes. ‘It was just… so horrible. I’ve never seen anything like it and Lindy is my friend.’
‘We know you’ve had a shock but we need to find her, and we need your help. Time is against us so please tell us all you know.’
After introductions for the tape, Gina kicked off with the questioning. ‘I know you have already described your evening and you’ve explained why you went over to Lindy Pickering’s house last night, but can you do it again for the tape?’
Gina waited while Pia relayed everything she said in the car outside Lindy’s while her solicitor sat back and watched. The woman’s pen scraped across her pad as the heart pendant on her necklace kept knocking the table.
‘We need to talk about Kain Pickering next. We are currently looking for Craig Crawford and we have reason to believe you know him well,’ Gina said.
Pia swallowed and once again, her solicitor whispered in her ear. ‘Know him well?’ She raised her brows as if fishing for more information.
‘Can you tell me a little about your relationship with Craig Crawford?’ Gina hated that they were wasting time when Lindy’s life was on the line, but the last thing she wanted was for Pia to start saying no comment.
‘Relationship. We don’t have a relationship. He’s my friend’s husband and what has this got to do with Kain?’
‘Craig is a person of interest and we need to find him. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.’ Gina paused, knowing it was time to show their hand. ‘We know you’ve been in a relationship with Craig Crawford. A witness saw you leaving his rented apartment in Nightingale House.’
She inhaled and slowly blew out yet another slow breath, then repeated the action twice more with her eyes closed. Her calm exterior gave way to her biting one of her French manicured nails, then she opened her eyes and looked directly at Gina. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Kain.’
‘We have reason to believe it does.’ Gina couldn’t erase those photos from her mind; all stuck to the apartment wall.
The solicitor placed her pen down and whispered to Pia once again. ‘Okay.’ She puffed up her cheeks and sighed. ‘I’m married and I love my husband.’ She scrunched up her nose for a second and continued. ‘Craig’s wife, Justine, is my friend. We’ve been friends for years.’ She pressed her lips together and her eyesstarted to water. ‘I didn’t mean anything to happen.’ She shook her head and sniffed. ‘Please don’t tell Justine.’
