Stay Alive Read online

  Now that he knew she was at home, all he had to do was be patient. By coming to an isolated spot like this one, she’d made it far easier for him.

  When he was about two hundred yards past her cottage, and the village had given way to fields with trees beyond, he made a right turn up a narrow lane. He followed the lane as it went straight for about fifty yards, passing a couple of barns, before swinging a sharp right back in the direction of the village. He stopped the Land Rover in a spot he’d recce’d earlier, and parked up on the verge amidst a copse of trees. From this position he could see the rear of Amanda’s cottage. Its rear garden backed directly onto a fallow field, and he could see a couple of kids playing on a trampoline in the garden next door.

  If Amanda Rowan came out the back way, cutting across the field, he’d see her easily. If she went out the front, the tiny, sensor-operated camera that he’d planted in the undergrowth just inside her front gate would pick up the movement and start recording. Whatever happened, as soon as she left the house, he’d know about it.

  And they’d finally be able to get to work.

  Four

  JESS GRAINGER HAD never been in a canoe before, mainly because it had never crossed her mind to get in one. She wasn’t a big fan of water, unless it was steaming hot and pouring out of a showerhead. She could swim okay, but only because they’d made her learn at school – and she still wasn’t that great at it – and right now the thought of falling into a cold, grey Scottish river (which she was sure she would do by the end of the day) filled her with a mixture of dread, and resentment that she’d agreed to come along on this trip in the first place.

  Uncle Tim must have read her thoughts because he clapped her hard on the back, his hand lingering for just a second too long. ‘You’re going to love it, Jessie,’ he said, giving her a big toothy smile as he took a deep breath of the fresh country air. ‘Just look at it.’ He took his hand away – thank God – and swung it round expansively as he admired the view of the gently running river, with the forest stretching up the hills that rose gently on each side of it.

  ‘Some of the best countryside in the world up here,’ the old guy who ran the place they were hiring the canoes from announced as he pushed one of them into the water, turning it round so that it rested in the shallows parallel to the bank. ‘And I’ve been to a hell of a lot of places, I’m telling you.’

  Jess was sure he had. Thin and wizened beneath his beanie cap, with a face full of cracks and lines, the old guy looked just like an Arctic explorer. But his words didn’t make her feel any more enthusiastic as she clambered unsteadily into the front of the canoe, almost toppling out of the other side in the process, and lowered herself onto the hard wooden seat.

  The old guy handed her a wooden paddle while Aunt Jean got in the back with all the grace of a rhino, landing heavily in her own seat.

  ‘I’ll do the steering, Jessie,’ announced Aunt Jean. ‘You just paddle. One side then the other. You’ll get used to it soon enough. It’s easy.’ Her tone wasn’t unfriendly, but it wasn’t too cheery either, and Jess could tell she didn’t really want her there, but was trying to make an effort for Casey’s sake.

  Casey was Jess’s little sister and she lived with Uncle Tim and Aunt Jean up here in the middle of the Scottish wilderness, having moved up a few months ago after Dad had died. They weren’t real sisters. Jess had been fostered, then adopted, aged seven, by the couple she came to know as Mum and Dad, when they didn’t think they could have children of their own. Then, less than a year later, Casey had turned up. By rights, Jess should have been jealous, but from the start she’d adored her little sister, and felt hugely protective of her, a feeling that had grown even stronger when first Mum, then Dad, had died.

  The whole reason Jess had come up here from London was to see Casey and make sure she was settling in okay. And to be fair, it seemed she was. Unlike Jess herself, Casey was really excited about this canoeing trip, and she jumped into the front of the other canoe, taking her paddle excitedly from the old guy, while Uncle Tim got in the back.

  The old guy grinned at Casey, his eyes twinkling. It was, Jess thought, the same old story. Everyone fell in love with Casey. She was just that kind of girl. She was blonde, bubbly, with a sweet cherubic face, a cute button nose, and a lively personality, but also enough smarts to know how to get round people, and make them do what she wanted without them realizing they were doing it. Although more than seven years separated them, Jess had always grown up in her shadow. Sometimes it surprised her that she wasn’t more envious of Casey, but only a few times had the fact that her sister got all the attention ever irritated her, and in truth, she loved her sister just as everyone else did. And now, with Dad gone, Casey was all she had left.

  ‘Okay, you’ve got my phone number,’ said the old guy, standing above them. ‘The mobile reception’s patchy along the river, but you’ll be able to get it in parts. The river’s running pretty slow at the moment, so you shouldn’t run into any problems but, if you do, just give us a call. Otherwise, we’ll meet you at the bridge near Tayleigh at five o’clock. That should give you plenty of time.’

  Five o’clock? That was almost four hours away and Jess felt her heart sink. There were a hundred things she’d rather be doing than this. When she’d come up, she’d envisaged taking Casey shopping in Inverness, not hauling ass down some Godforsaken river in the back of beyond.

  ‘Have you got everything, Tim?’ yelled Aunt Jean from behind her, her voice loud in Jess’s ear.

  Tim patted the rucksack beside him. ‘Food, drink, the lot,’ he replied, sounding as excited as Casey. ‘Are we all ready?’

  ‘I’m ready,’ shouted Casey, lifting the paddle above her head, two-handed, making the old guy laugh.

  ‘You’re going to have a great time, wee lassie,’ he told her, and gave their canoe a push so it drifted into the deeper water. ‘And you will too, lassie, if you let yourself,’ he said to Jess.

  ‘She’s from London,’ said Jean, as if this explained everything. ‘She’s not used to the great outdoors.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Jess wearily, forcing a smile as she sank her paddle in the water, while the old guy gave their canoe a push and they drifted slowly out onto the river.

  And right into the beginning of a nightmare.

  Five

  20 days ago

  MIKE BOLT WAS dreaming about his dead wife.

  It was something he did more and more these days. The fact was he’d pretty much deified her. In death, she could do no wrong, which was why he’d never been able to hold down a serious relationship in the almost ten years since she’d passed away. He’d been engaged a couple of years back for a while to a CPS lawyer called Claire. He’d even moved her in to his place in Clerkenwell, and for a while he’d thought that she might finally be the one to get him over Mikaela. But in the end it hadn’t worked either. Claire did things that irritated him, things that Mikaela would never have done. She talked about her work all the time; she obsessed about her weight and kept going on strange, masochistic diets; and she didn’t like children. Bolt wasn’t a huge fan of kids either, but Mikaela had been, and she’d also been two months pregnant when she’d died. So, as far as Bolt was concerned, it reflected badly on Claire, and was yet another reason to end his relationship with her.

  Since Claire had gone, Bolt had had a couple of other flings, including a recent one with a former colleague of his, Tina Boyd, which had been doomed from the start (Tina was far too much of a handful for him, and probably any man), but for the last few months he’d been resolutely single, giving him ample opportunity to fixate on Mikaela – something that he’d lost no time in doing.

  In this particular dream Bolt was having, he and Mikaela were riding horses across a long lonely stretch of beach somewhere in France. Mikaela’s horse was galloping away into the distance, and looked to Bolt to be out of control, but Mikaela didn’t seem to care. The wind was blowing through her long blonde hair and he could hear her lau
ghter fading away as she got further and further from his horse, which refused to go any faster than at a gentle trot even though he was yelling at it to get a move on. And then, as he watched, Mikaela disappeared from view altogether.

  Which was the moment the windswept beach began to fade as an incessant ringing in his head drowned out everything else.

  Bolt’s eyes snapped open and he sat up in the bed. His mobile was vibrating and bouncing round the bedside table. The clock said 05.46. As he reached over to pick up the phone, he paused to look at the photo of him and Mikaela that stood next to it. It was a shot from their holiday in Corfu two summers before she died, both of them tanned and grinning at the camera. Whenever he was in a relationship, Bolt would hide the photo away, sneaking only the occasional peek at it, but the moment he was single, it would be back on the bedside table so that he could wake up every morning to his memories. He knew it was bad for him to dwell as much as he did, but he seemed incapable of doing anything about it. Emotionally, he was trapped in a past that had ended almost a decade earlier, and the sad thing was, he probably always would be. Only one thing kept his mind off Mikaela, and that was work.

  And it was work calling him now. Specifically, his long-time colleague, Mo Khan. And, even before he picked up the phone, Bolt knew what it was going to be about, because there’d only be one reason why Mo would be phoning at this time in the morning, although he hoped to God he was wrong.

  Yawning, he pressed the Call Receive button. ‘You woke me from a beautiful dream.’

  ‘I’m truly sorry about that, boss, but right now that’s the least of our problems.’

  Bolt felt his heart sink. ‘There’s been another one, hasn’t there?’

  ‘It looks that way. I’ve just had a call from a DCI Matt Black of Thames Valley CID. They’ve got a murder scene up in some woods between Reading and Basingstoke. A home invasion. Two dead, one injured. They think it might be the work of The Disciple.’

  ‘That’s three casualties. He usually only targets couples.’

  ‘It looks like he attacked the husband and his mistress, and the wife turned up and disturbed him. She made a dash for it, and although she got cut up a bit, and almost got hit by a car while she was running, she’s conscious.’

  ‘Is there anything specific that makes Thames Valley think it’s The Disciple?’

  ‘The MO’s definitely his, boss. No question about it.’

  Bolt sighed and got out of bed, looking for some clean clothes. ‘Christ, this is all we need. The pressure’s going to be even more intense now. Who’s driving, me or you?’

  ‘I’m just about to get in my car now. I’ll be with you in twenty. You can sleep on the way down, have some more beautiful dreams.’

  Bolt grunted. ‘Somehow I doubt it.’

  Six

  FOR THE LAST fifteen months, a brutal serial killer dubbed The Disciple had kept the south of England in the grip of fear, and the media in the grip of excitement. Before the previous night’s attack, he’d committed six murders in three previous incidents. His modus operandi was always the same. He picked isolated detached properties occupied by professional couples, all of which so far had been to the west of London. He would break in at night, disable the male partner with a non-fatal stab wound to the leg, before overpowering and binding the female partner. He’d then torture and sexually assault the woman, and on one occasion the man as well, before finally killing them both with a knife, using their blood to daub Satanic signs on the walls of the room in which he carried out the attacks. On each occasion the left-hand little finger of the female victim had been cut off, and was subsequently missing from the crime scene, suggesting The Disciple was taking them as trophies.

  Bolt had been brought in to lead the inquiry four months earlier, after the previous senior investigating officer – a good solid cop called Mason, whom Bolt had met a couple of times before – had had a massive heart attack and dropped dead. That should have told Bolt everything he needed to know about this case. It was a nightmare for any SIO. Not only was the pressure for a result enormous, and seemingly continuously building, but leads on the ground were desperately scarce. The Disciple might have been a sick, deranged individual, but he was also clever enough not to leave any DNA behind at the scene of his crimes. So far, the only possible clue they had to his identity was a witness description of a man in dark clothing and a woollen cap seen by a male dog walker hanging round near the house of the final two victims the day before they were killed. The description of the man himself was fairly basic – tall, well-built, somewhere in his thirties – but the witness had noticed a dark green tattoo on his left forearm, where his sleeve had been rolled up. It wasn’t much to reassure an increasingly concerned public that they were making progress on the case, especially considering the number of detectives working on it, but Bolt had learned in more than twenty-five years as a police officer that sometimes you simply had to be patient and wait for the break, although in recent weeks he too had grown intensely frustrated with the lack of leads.

  Now, though, it looked like they might have one, in the form of a survivor. Bolt wasn’t going to get his hopes up too much, but when he’d taken the case he’d always known that, as long as he kept killing, The Disciple was going to make a mistake eventually. Maybe, just maybe, this was it.

  It was 7.10 a.m. and night had given way to an overcast morning when they arrived. The murder scene was a large detached house in the middle of a stretch of beech wood – the kind of place that estate agents would claim had character – surrounded by a high brick wall, which was possible but not easy to scale, set on a quiet, heavily wooded back road not far from the A33. The road in front of the house was lined on both sides with police vehicles, and a group of uniformed PCs were drinking coffee and eating sandwiches.

  ‘It’s a perfect location for The Disciple,’ said Mo, as they parked up behind a police van and got out of the car. ‘He could have watched the house to his heart’s content and no one would have spotted him.’

  ‘I don’t understand what makes people live out in places like this,’ said Bolt. ‘It’s so damn lonely. I need people around me. I need to hear, I don’t know . . . Noise.’

  ‘You’re a city boy. So am I. But I reckon my wife would love it out here.’ Mo stood staring at the house, leaning back so his belly stuck out. He’d always been a short, stout little guy, the very antithesis of Bolt, who was tall and broad-shouldered, but he’d put on a fair bit of weight of late, and with his thick head of almost-silver hair, he was now beginning to resemble a middle-aged Hobbit. ‘How much do you reckon this place costs?’ he asked vaguely.

  ‘God knows. A million. Two million. A lot more than you or I could ever afford.’ Bolt reckoned that Mikaela would have liked a place like this too. She’d always wanted to move out of the city and start a new life and family in the countryside. For a moment, he wondered how they would have coped: them living out here and him still a city cop, commuting into town. Pretty well, he imagined.

  She’d liked fresh air. Bolt could take it or leave it.

  They climbed under the police tape, showed their IDs to the group of cops eating their breakfast, then made their way over to the van containing the coveralls that they needed to put on before they could enter the crime scene. Bolt felt mildly nauseous at the prospect of going inside. He hated the sight of any dead body, and always had done, ever since he’d seen his first one back in the early days in the job. He’d seen plenty since and, every time, it reminded him far too much of his own mortality – the knowledge that one day he would end up a lifeless husk like all of them.

  Death depressed Bolt. The needless, violent deaths of those whose time should have still been far away depressed him even more, and there were few killings more violent and needless than those committed by The Disciple. At the home of the last two victims, he’d been almost overcome with emotion as he’d walked through the house, seen the photos on the wall of the young couple – both barely thirty – and then gone
into the bedroom and seen the terrible things that had been done to their naked bodies. Almost overcome, but not quite. Ultimately, he was still professional enough to hold himself together in front of his colleagues, but more and more these days he wondered if he was becoming too affected by his job; whether it was time to pull back from the tough, high-profile cases and finish the last four years of his thirty with a whimper rather than a bang.

  ‘DCS Bolt?’

  Bolt turned to see a short, prematurely bald guy with a kindly, boyish face and chubby cheeks, dressed in coveralls. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m DCI Matt Black. Thames Valley CID. I’m in charge of securing the scene.’ He spoke matter-of-factly in a slight West Country burr that reminded Bolt of the guy who’d played Inspector Wexford in the old TV series. He also looked too young to be a DCI, but maybe that was just Bolt showing his age.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Matt.’ He put out a hand and shook, before introducing Mo to him. ‘We’d appreciate it if you could show us around the scene.’

  ‘Of course. Come this way.’

  They followed Black as he led them through the police vehicles and along a path lined with fluorescent markers towards the house. An imposing set of wooden security gates with a curving line of wrought-iron spikes along the top announced the entrance. The gates were open, revealing a gravel driveway and turning circle in front of the house, and a separate two-car garage to the left. A red Porsche Turbo – the kind beloved of middle-aged men wanting to impress the girls – was parked in front of it, and Bolt assumed that it belonged to the male victim. As they passed through the gates, he asked if they’d been open when the first officers had arrived at the scene.

  Black shook his head. ‘No. They were closed and locked. We think the suspect came over the wall round the back, and picked the lock on the back door. It’s only got a single five-bar lock, along with two bolts that weren’t pulled across, so if someone knew what they were doing, it wouldn’t be that hard to get in.’