Blood Runs Cold_A completely unputdownable mystery and suspense thriller Page 25

  She looked up to see the gap narrowing. Someone was shutting off the entrance.

  ‘No,’ she screamed. ‘Kevin, stop this!’

  She heard a grunt; another foot of gap disappeared.

  ‘Kevin…’

  But it wasn’t her pleading that stopped Starkey from shutting her in completely. It was the clatter of blades chopping through the air as a helicopter passed low overhead.

  Forty-Nine

  Hawley looked up, waving his arms madly as the helicopter flew over. He didn’t know if he’d been seen, but the chopper slowed and banked in the air a mile away, looking like it was going to make another pass. Then a movement in his peripheral vision drew his attention and made him look down beyond the chapel ruins. There he saw a man in combat trousers and a brown T-shirt carrying a huge rucksack, heading towards the bottom of the dell. Moving steadily and unerringly towards the pond a few hundred yards beyond.

  Where the hell was Anna?

  ‘Oy!’ called Hawley. ‘You there!’

  The figure ignored him and continued, descending through the bracken determinedly.

  ‘Hey, hang on a minute.’ Hawley started moving down off the path but then hesitated. It crossed his mind for a fraction of a second that this might simply be someone on army manoeuvres yomping through the forest.

  But even the army didn’t have backpacks that heavy. With a rush of horror, Hawley knew who this man was. Knew what was in that backpack.

  He moved, picking up the pace, wading through the ferns and small trees at an angle to intercept the man twenty yards from the water’s edge.

  He kept calling out, ‘Starkey, Kevin Starkey, listen to me.’

  But there was no let-up in pace. Hawley emerged into a partial clearing a few yards from Starkey, who didn’t miss a step. Instead, he suddenly veered towards Hawley and swung a very large and vicious-looking knife in his direction. Hawley danced back with no more than a few inches between the knife’s tip and his chest.

  ‘It’s over,’ said Hawley. ‘They know you’re here. The helicopter’s seen us.’

  Starkey said nothing. He half-turned, the knife outstretched towards Hawley, his back to the water. But still he took steps backwards, closing in on the pond, his eyes wild, his face unreadable.

  ‘Is she in there? Is she in there, you fuck?’ Hawley yelled. He looked at the ground, saw what he wanted and picked up a fist-sized stone. He ran forwards and threw it, hitting Starkey in the chest. The big man roared and lunged towards Hawley. But he was too slow and weighed down by the backpack.

  ‘Let her go, you bastard,’ Hawley spat and threw another rock. This close it was difficult to miss, and it hit Starkey’s shoulder, making him spin and wince with pain. The edge of the pond was a reed-filled swamp. Starkey went down on one knee and shrugged off one shoulder strap, leaning back so the other one came free.

  ‘Give it up. Give her up. There’s no way out for you,’ Hawley pleaded.

  Starkey spoke for the first time, and his words, growled out like an angry dog, drilled into Hawley’s brain to lodge there forever.

  ‘It’s not yours. It’s mine. My bones to wash clean.’

  Hawley let him have another rock, this one finding its mark on Starkey’s neck. But now the backpack was off, Starkey got to his feet quickly and took four large steps forward, causing Hawley to dance away again. But Starkey’s move was only so that he could gain some room. The moment Hawley backed away, Starkey turned back and grasped the backpack with a hand on both sides, stepped into the pond, wading quickly up to his thighs.

  ‘No. No. You sick bastard!’ yelled Hawley.

  With a grunt, Starkey threw the heavy pack out into the dark water before turning back to face Hawley with a dreadful grin.

  * * *

  In the crypt Anna stared about her, taking in the cameras, the lights and the tools of Starkey’s terrifying trade with a shiver of disgust, looking for anything to use. In the end, she resorted to grabbing as many of the larger, stronger-looking bones and laying them in a rough cross-hatch pattern on the floor. She knew she was desecrating the crypt and what was probably a crime scene, but there was no choice. She worked until she had a pile about a foot tall in the tunnel under the opening, grabbed one of the duvets and threw it over the top. Gingerly, she stepped up, hearing cracks as some of the old calcified bones gave under her weight, praying that they might hold long enough for one jump. She threw up the backpack and, swaying, flexed her knees. Reaching up, she leaped, fingers extended towards the lip of the flagstones. They found their mark and she used the momentum to pull, flexing her elbows, feeling her jacket snag on the edge of the partially replaced stone lid, pushing through the restraint, hearing material tear as first her chest and then her hips appeared at the rim and she fell forwards, scrambling through, her hands covered in dirt and debris, her muscles trembling from the effort.

  Anna paused only to pick up her backpack and stumbled towards the opening. Outside, the brightness of the day took her by surprise after the cold darkness of the crypt. She ran back towards Hawley and saw immediately he wasn’t there. His shouts drew her attention and she looked down in time to see Starkey propelling a heavy backpack into the water of the pond below.

  Something broke inside Anna then. Gave like a taut string finally yielding to the pressure of an impossibly heavy load. There was no time to consider words like depravity or evil. They were hopelessly inadequate to describe the numb drumming in her ears. All she knew in that moment was that her body became galvanised by purpose. She had time to hear Hawley swear and move towards Starkey in the water before she began to run.

  * * *

  Hawley had no thoughts other than to get to the rucksack, already three-quarters submerged in the water. Starkey was coming at him, his expression fixed, eyes now wild with an obscene purpose no sane person would ever understand. Hawley moved forwards, reaching down, grabbing whatever he could, aware of the knife in Starkey’s hand, driven by the sight of the backpack sinking ever lower in the water. Starkey roared and lunged; Hawley spun and threw mud and dirt into the man’s face. It slowed Starkey, caused him to hesitate and splutter, a big hand coming up to wipe, allowing Hawley to run past into the water. He felt the sharp stab in his shoulder, felt the resistance of bone as the blade slid, but continued on, reaching for the straps, ducking sideways in an attempt to get away from Starkey and pull the rucksack out.

  Weighed down by its contents and water, Hawley needed both hands to haul, feet sinking and slipping into the silt below, groaning, teeth grinding with effort, the backpack at last now more out of the water than in. He turned in time to see Starkey looming above him, only barely able to turn away from the downward thrust of the knife. But this time there was real pain as the blade cut through the muscles of his forearm. Hawley fell, hitting the shallow water, knowing he needed to get up, knowing Starkey was above him now and that the next strike of the knife might be to chest or neck or head. He turned, spluttering, helpless on his back, looking up at the monstrous shadow above him, hearing only the whump, whump, whump of the helicopter blades as it hovered above them.

  Fifty

  Anna deployed her ASP and the telescopic baton felt reassuringly solid in her hand. She ran into the water, the splashes loud, her knees high, wanting him to know she was there. It worked. The noise made Starkey hesitate and turn. But Anna had the advantage of momentum.

  Move fast, hit hard. That was what her instructors always told her.

  There was no hesitation as she put all her weight behind a single blow to the outside of Starkey’s thigh. He buckled and she knew the pain would be immense. There was a problem in using the lower extremities as targets because it left you open to blows from the upper limbs. But she had surprise and shock and the water on her side. Starkey’s arm holding the knife dropped, and Anna brought the baton back on the counter-swing and hit him above the elbow.

  His hand jerked open, spilling the knife into the water.

  Starkey howled with pain. He was on
his knees. Anna held the PAVA canister in her other hand and, from a metre, sprayed it into Starkey’s face. Pelargonic acid vannillylamide was what most UK forces had gone over to using. Naturally occurring and closely related to the irritant in chilli peppers, it incapacitated through severe pain for up to an hour. Anna’s aim was good and Starkey got some in both eyes. He screamed, both hands balled to his orbits as he flopped and flailed.

  Anna stood back. Starkey was stumbling out of the water, whimpering, unable to see.

  ‘Get on the floor,’ she ordered.

  He didn’t comply.

  ‘On the floor.’ She went behind him and kicked at his knees. He stumbled and she booted his back so that he fell forwards.

  ‘Hands behind you. Put your hands behind you.’

  Still he didn’t comply. She knelt on his back, using the baton against the back of his neck. ‘Put your hands behind you, NOW.’

  Weakly, Starkey shifted his arms and she had the rigid cuffs on him within seconds. His feet were still in the water. It wouldn’t take much to kick him around so his face was in an inch of mud. She could use her foot then. Press his nose and mouth into the filth. Use the Velcro straps to restrain his legs. She wondered how long it might take for the bastard to drown.

  Janice Dawson’s ragged, broken voice reached out to her.

  ‘He boiled her bones, you know that?’

  She thought about it then. Wondered how it might have been if the helicopter had not been hovering. Some – colleagues who had to deal with filth like Starkey and the aftermath, the press, the horror etched in the faces of the relatives – might have accepted pressing his face into the choking mud as a blessing, a mercy killing. A way of ridding the world of a blight. But Anna was a hunter, not an executioner. Neither the judge nor the jury. And the force would see it as cold-blooded murder. It would mean a criminal conduct dismissal and a trial. Common sense held sway.

  But it took a hefty dollop of self-persuasion and a pinch of self-preservation. Instead, Anna contented herself with imagining it and committing the crime in her mind. That way it was over and done within seconds.

  She surprised herself by feeling no remorse. No burning need to chastise herself.

  Shaw would have been proud.

  Anna turned away. Starkey was no longer her priority. She turned back to Hawley, who was already getting to his feet and yanking on the rucksack once more. They dragged it out, over the mud and through the reeds and the pond scum, both of them panting with effort, Hawley falling to his knees frantically, his arm slick with his own blood mingled with the filthy silt, searching for the zipper, tearing it open, ripping back the cover.

  She was in there. Trussed up like a piece of meat. Duct tape over her mouth, around her arms, around her knees and her torso. Anna held the rucksack while Hawley yanked her out by the shoulders. Blair wasn’t moving. She was inanimate flesh. Drowned in three feet of water.

  ‘No. No. No,’ said Hawley, laying her on her side. Anna fumbled at the tape. But Hawley was reaching for something in his pocket and pulled out keys. Or something that looked like a key, but which he unfolded to reveal a small, thin blade that sliced through the tape around Blair’s mouth, her arms and her legs and torso.

  Behind them, Starkey was moaning.

  Hawley pulled away the tape over Blair’s mouth and flipped her over onto her back before he pinched her nose, ready to apply mouth to mouth. But he was shaking, staring at her, and Anna saw that he was terrified. This was what Starkey, and the police’s handling of Rosie Dawson’ murder had done to him. Paralysed him with doubt and fear, even when it came to a matter of life and death.

  Anna walked across and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Ben. It’s OK. It’s OK to do this. You have to.’

  Hawley turned his face up to the sky and screamed in frustration.

  ‘Ben,’ Anna said firmly. ‘Help her.’

  Hawley looked at her, squeezed his eyes shut once and then bent his head to blow air into Blair’s throat. Five quick breaths followed by chest compressions, rapidly, twice per second. Then he listened, ear close to her heart. Unsatisfied, he gave her two more breaths and repeated the compressions. Thirty times. After the third set of rescue breaths, as he listened again for any hint of respiration, Blair coughed, threw up two lots of dirty water and moaned. Hawley pushed her onto her side and leaned in close to her.

  ‘It’s OK, Blair, everything is OK. Just breathe, lovely. Breathe.’

  Anna exhaled one long, tremulous sigh. Something dense and brittle that had been wrapped around her throat cracked. She knew her mouth was trembling, felt the tears come and did nothing to stop them. She fell to her knees in the mud, arms loose in front of her, letting the adrenaline leech away. She reached out and touched Hawley, smiling in approval and gratitude. He returned it briefly before he turned back to his patient, stroking her hair, talking to her. Blair’s face was turned towards Anna. Frightened, confused, her flesh pale, her eyes blinking and staring back. But staring back alive.

  It was ten seconds before Anna could get back to her feet.

  She walked over to where Starkey was lying, face down in the mud. She wasn’t thinking about Shaw anymore. She was thinking of Shipwright. What he would have done. She leaned over and said, ‘Kevin Starkey, I am arresting you for the abduction and attempted murder of Blair Smeaton. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Starkey said only one word. With his face turned, it emerged distorted and alien, more like a gruff bark. But Anna heard it well enough.

  ‘Bitch.’

  ‘Too bloody right,’ she said in reply.

  * * *

  Within twenty minutes, the dell surrounding St Wystone’s was teeming with police. Because of the terrain, they airlifted Blair out and, having seen Hawley’s wounds, Anna insisted he go too. In truth, they’d had no choice because Blair wouldn’t let Hawley’s hand go no matter how much the paramedics asked her to.

  As the casualties took off in the air ambulance and before she spoke to the DI from Gwent Police who was coordinating their response, Anna knew she needed to make one call. She took out her phone, found the number on speed dial and walked back up the slope to the ruins, where she stood looking down at the foetid water that Starkey had tried to use with such murderous intent and pressed the call button.

  ‘Danaher,’ said the answering voice.

  ‘Julie, it’s Anna Gwynne. We’ve found her and she’s alive.’

  Two long seconds of inhaled breath led to the noises of a chair scraping quickly across a hard floor, the muffled sound of a hand being placed roughly over a receiver and a disembodied series of incoherent shouts.

  ‘Ma’am, I’ve put you on speaker,’ Danaher again, urgency and bewilderment lifting her voice. ‘Could you repeat what you said?’

  ‘I’m in a forest in Wales watching an air ambulance on its way to hospital. In it is Blair Smeaton and she is very much alive.’

  Anna would later swear she heard the roar of triumph erupting from Edinburgh even without a phone.

  Fifty-One

  They took Blair to the children’s hospital in Bristol and Hawley to the infirmary. He needed transfusions and sutures, and they kept him in for five days for fear of infection from the stagnant pond water. Blair went back to Edinburgh, to Kirsty, her mother and Bernard after a week.

  The press had a field day. Photographs of Blair with her mother and sister made the front pages for weeks, Mrs Smeaton either beaming or in tears in equal measure. The image showed a fridge stocked with lollipops so that Blair and Kirsty never had to walk to the shop for one again.

  A search of Starkey’s workshop threw up a thumb drive whose contents were never revealed in any detail to the relatives. It was clear he’d used St Wystone’s as his killing field. Some of the videos seemed to concentrate on the terror he tried to induce in his victims before and during. Harrow
ing images linking him to all the abductions and murders of the missing children Hawley tied together with his theory. There were photographs of all his victims, including those he’d used as adverts on the Littlefeet, Pinocchio and UWAntme sites. The stored passwords led to his own Dark Web PPV page. But even Varga did not get access to that. They had specialists trained for that sort of thing. It was not a job anyone did for very long.

  It would take weeks if not months to sift through the bone repository. But already they’d found some that were younger, fresher, whiter than the others. Identifications would follow. Lily Callaghan and Jade Hemmings and Katelyn Prosser, names Anna was by now terribly familiar with, were only three amongst many.

  They also found a cryptocurrency hard drive, a wallet which Starkey refused to provide the password for. Despite every effort on the part of the Hi-Tech unit, it remained unopenable. Varga explained to Anna that it was designed to be impenetrable. She also surmised that due to what they found on his laptop, and how many years he’d been using the Dark Web, it would probably be brimming with bitcoins.

  In his role as a maintenance engineer for Rowsys, Starkey accessed a huge range of areas not usually available to the public. Hard-pressed NHS clinics where notes would often be left in preparation, or in piles awaiting pick-up, and all the victims had been seen in hospital in the six months leading up to their abductions at a time when Starkey was present. He’d kept a low profile. He must have fitted in. A ghost. Or perhaps more a spectre that watched and waited, read through files and made notes of his own, deciding which of his victims might be the most vulnerable, the most accessible.

  Choosing which of his flowers to pick.

  * * *

  A week after Anna and Hawley confronted Starkey, on a dull afternoon with clouds building in the west, Anna met with Rainsford. The meeting had a very different feel to it from the last time they’d met for a Friday afternoon conflab. Last time, they’d talked about Woakes, his gung-ho approach and the risk he posed in future investigations. From the look on Rainsford’s face, he was sharing that memory with her now. Holder and Khosa had once again acquitted themselves brilliantly, but Woakes’ frantic search of Pux Cottage had been the final straw in terms of his probation.