Keeping her eyes on the man, Jodie reached and pulled the door. Perhaps if Scott was still alive, and she could get him out of there, they might stand a chance of fighting off this man together.
'Why don't you put that down?'
She shook her head.
The man was struggling to control his temper. 'Get back into that room.'
'Fuck you.'
'If you get back in there,' he said, gritting his teeth, 'we can both pretend this never happened.'
The door wouldn't open. She glanced behind her once - there was a bolt sliding across this one - then very quickly back at the man.
In that time, he'd taken a step forward.
The door was locked more securely than hers had been. She could undo it, but not without devoting effort and attention to it, and he clearly wasn't about to allow her that. She'd need both hands, too.
'I'm not going to hurt you,' he said.
Another step.
'This is just a game.'
When he said that, something rose up inside her.
Pay attention
, the voice had told her when Scott was screaming.
Use it when you can.
Each terrible second of it was still with her. The guilt and pain, the frustration and anger. Everything, all of it, it all suddenly erupted to the surface.
'Fuck you!' She found herself almost bent double with the force of it, spitting it at him. She wanted to kill him. 'I heard what you did to him, you fucking sick bastard!'
Her arms were trembling. In front of her, the burning tip of the wood danced around.
'Fuck me?' The man sounded colder now. The mask twitched as his face contorted beneath it. 'What do you know, anyway, you fucking whore? You don't understand why I'm doing this. You don't know what it's like to love a child.'
He took a step closer. She waved the burning wood at him but all it did was scar her vision. He wasn't frightened of her; he was overtaken by anger himself.
'You don't know what love
is.
'
She squirted lighter fluid onto the end of the wood. It burst brightly into life.
'Keep back,' she said.
'Or what?'
He came at her then, his free hand out, the other holding the knife back and down by his side, ready to swing it at her. She half fell, half dodged out of the way. Moving sideways, back towards the fire, squirting the can at him.
Get him with it. Fucking kill him.
He held his arm up to cover his eyes, but swiped at her surprisingly quickly with the other hand. The knife cut the air in front of her.
'Come here! Fucking bitch.'
She hated him. He was this big, solid thing coming at her. She kept jerking the can: throwing the lighter fluid at him, backing away across the clearing.
But he came straight at her, quick and strong.
The knife was held low again, and he was shouting at her with rage, trying to startle and frighten her, to make her flinch and turn away. That was her first instinct, but she fought it,
remembering how Scott had screamed
, and gripped down on the can as hard as she could.
The lighter fluid arced out at him again - and then he slammed into her, knocking her backwards. She hit the ground before she knew what had happened. Her lungs felt knocked out through her chest, and she tried to scream but couldn't. Pain. Panic - the burning wood was pinned between them, scorching her face - and then suddenly the man launched himself aside. The burning wood disappeared with him.
She lay there for perhaps a full second, too shocked by the impact and the burn to move. Then -
Keep going
- she forced herself to roll the opposite way. Centimetres of safety. But the man was staggering across the clearing, moving away from her.
His front was engulfed in flame.
He was smacking himself, patting madly at the cross-stitch of fire burning bright yellow in the early-morning light. But the flames were too much. His sleeves were alight, his mask, his hair. He was screeching. She had done this to him and she was glad. His hair was burning like the head of a candle.
Jodie got to her feet.
Even on fire, the man still had the knife. She had nothing.
He dropped to his knees, pressing himself into the snow, rolling this way and that. The air was full of hiss and sizzle. Smoke rose from him as he put out the flames.
Run.
No.
She walked awkwardly across to the campfire and kicked one of the stone columns. Nothing, so she kicked it again, harder. The man was on his hands and knees, bellowing with anger and pain. One last kick and everything collapsed. A
shriek
of metal; a cloud of ash and dust and bright orange sparks billowing in the air, warming her.
Fuck you, she thought, and picked up one of the stones. It was about the size of a brick. Same sort of weight.
The man struggled to his feet but didn't make it. He fell onto his elbows.
Jodie stumbled across, holding the stone to her chest. This man wasn't going to hurt anyone again. Not her; not Scott. He wasn't going to bring anyone else out into the woods and torture them, and he was going to pay for everything he'd done tonight.
He was going to pay for everything.
She lifted the rock, held it out a little--
'Wait!'
--and brought it down hard on the back of his head. She felt the impact more than heard it: felt the reverberation in her arms, and imagined his brain jolting loose inside the cracked skull. Immediately, he was flat in the snow: limp and empty and gone. There was no blood.
Do it again. Make sure.
'Stop!'
Who was talking?
she wondered. Suddenly there were hands on her, pulling her away.
She fought them, turning and lashing out.
'Get off me!'
But they were too strong; someone wrapped their arms around her in a bear hug and lifted her up. The brick fell away into the snow.
'It's okay,' someone said. 'It's okay. It's the police.'
She kept kicking as she was hoisted back across the clearing, whipping her head from side to side. Through her tears, she saw a man in a huge black coat crouching beside the man on the ground, and then she was swung round to face the other way. There were more men across the clearing.
Policemen. One of them was approaching with a large blanket.
Calm down.
The man holding her put her down gently, and took the blanket from the other policeman. She was still shaking, but she allowed him to drape it over her shoulders and pull it round her. Then she turned and collapsed against him.
He held her, and said quiet soothing things to her that she didn't properly hear.
The man over by the body said, 'It's him.'
The policeman held her even tighter. If it wasn't for him, Jodie thought, she'd be on the floor now. But at the same time she was shivering with adrenalin.
'Scott!' She remembered suddenly, moving away from him slightly.
'It's okay.' He released her and looked down into her face. 'Scott's safe. He's at the hospital. He helped us find you.'
Jodie was confused. At the hospital? How was he at the hospital? That didn't make any sense. Why would the man have let him go? She looked over at the storeroom on the far edge of the clearing. For the first time, she noticed that something had been drawn on it. Some kind of ... spider's web, it looked like.
'But ...'
'It's okay,' the man said again. 'We'll explain everything later. The main thing is, you're safe now.'
Jodie looked up at him. He was old and solid, and she'd never seen a man look so tired. Harrowed, almost. For a strange second, it was as though he'd been here with her for every single minute of the night. Beneath the exhaustion, his expression was almost fatherly. There was something else there, too. He looked relieved, but not just that. He looked
peaceful
. She simply fell back against him. It was easier for now.
He hugged her gently, and whispered: 'We found you.'
4 DECEMBER
32 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN
6.48 A.M.
Mark
Panic.
Before I'd even properly collected my ideas and thoughts together, I opened the connection to the search team at the woods and sent out an alarm. All I knew for sure was that I needed to speak to someone urgently. There was that feeling again, that something was wrong; only now it was a hundred times stronger and focused entirely differently.
I waited.
The locker room was unbearably hot and claustrophobic. It probably always had been, but this was the first time it had also felt threatening. The artificial lights were buzzing, and the heavy
clank
of the pipes kept jolting me. I thought of all the people working in the hospital and how far away they were. I was on my own here, down long, empty corridors blocked off by sheets of dirty polythene. I kept glancing over my shoulder, checking the corners, the doorway.
It took a minute for Officer Bates to arrive at the camera. He looked tired, but also flushed and excited, and he spoke before I could say anything:
'Sir, they've found her.'
I acknowledged that on one level, brushed it aside on another.
'Is Hunter there?'
'He's gone back to the department. He's not happy.'
'Listen to me very carefully. You need to get the men there moving. I need you to re-establish the cordon along the road.'
He frowned, maybe thinking I'd misunderstood him.
'But they've got him. Detective Sergeant Mercer radioed in from the woods. The girl's there and they've got the kidnapper. Why do we need the cordon?'
'Because I'm telling you to.' I checked the map. 'Do it now. East and west, as far as they can go. I'll take responsibility. They need to make sure that
nobody else
comes out of those woods. Do that now, and then come back.'
'Yes, sir.'
And stop calling me, sir.
But he was already gone, probably spurred into action by the edge in my voice.
It was strange: I felt panicked inside, but on the surface I was calm and practical. My mind had taken charge for the moment.
Think things through, it told me. Breathe deeply.
Swim as hard as you can.
And don't turn your back on the fucking door.
At least they'd found her - that was something. If nothing else, Scott and Jodie would both survive the night, and that was surely the most important thing. And they probably had got their man. There wasn't necessarily anything to worry about.
But it wouldn't hurt to set up the cordon anyway. Until it was all over, I was adamant that nobody else should be allowed to leave those woods. Nobody. Actually, I wasn't calm at all; I was trembling. I felt like there was a massive hole growing in my chest. There
was
something to worry about. Call it a leap straight from A to D. Mercer would understand.
I glanced at the doorway.
Fuck this.
The best way to deal with fear is to face it straight off, get it out of the way. Bates would be busy sorting out the cordon for a moment, so I went over to the door, circling it before stepping out into the corridor.
Nobody around. The lights were still flickering, humming like wasps against the ceiling. The corridor kept blinking.
You're over-reacting.
There was no reason to think I was in danger, and Scott had the security guard outside his room.
On camera, Bates had returned. 'They're on their way out.'
'Okay.'
What else?
'We've got everything under control out here.' Bates looked at me curiously. 'Are you okay, sir?'
'I'm fine.'
But I wasn't fine.
The far monitor showed the case file on Reardon. I'd been reading through, looking for clues and explanations, and my attention had been caught by one small detail. Meaningless in itself, perhaps, but it stopped me in my tracks. During the most recent custody dispute, the court had accepted that Reardon planted the listening device in his child's teddy bear, and when I'd first read that it had seemed like a validation of his guilt.
But Reardon denied doing it.
I'd pondered that for a moment. If he had done it, would he bother denying it? Was there any point in that - anything to be gained? It was still likely, I told myself, that he was responsible. But the thought remained. What if it was someone else?
And if not Reardon, then who?
We knew the 50/50 Killer used surveillance equipment to research his targets, often over a long period of time. Was it possible one of his devices had been found and falsely attributed to Reardon?
We knew he destroyed relationships. Until now, he'd always targeted couples, but that didn't mean he couldn't have broadened his range.
'Nobody understands how much a father loves his child,' Reardon had said.
I'd reopened the photographs of the wall where the 50/50 Killer had made his notes. So many of the designs were similar that it had made sense to think of them as drafts. But then I remembered what he'd told Kevin Simpson in the audio recording: 'If it's any consolation, she and Scott are one of my couples.'
One
of my couples.
At that moment, the screen beeped once: a new report arriving in the main file. The air hummed as I clicked through to it.
It was a forensics report from the woods. The van had eventually been checked and declared safe, and Simon and his team had been granted access. This was their first report, and in the centre of the screen there was a photograph of what they'd found. Painted inside the van, a third spider web. That made three in total.
One for Jodie and Kevin. A second for Jodie and Scott.
The third for James Reardon and his child?
I turned back to the camera at the woods.
After his wife had called earlier, Mercer had left his mobile phone on the desk in front of me. I picked it up and switched it on.
'I need to talk to Mercer,' I said. 'Urgently. Get me a patch-through number to someone on the search team.'
4 DECEMBER