PAIN HAS A PERMANENT ADDRESS - READ BETWEEN THE LIES

PAIN HAS A PERMANENT ADDRESS - EPISODE THREE

Chapter Eight

Fear gripped me.   About a hundred yards to my right I heard more movements.  Then the sound stopped.

  My blood ran cold as I sensed it moving closer. Then it headed off in the direction of the original howl.

  I heard the sound of someone running.  Sabrina.

   I jumped to my feet and ran through the gloom, bumping against trees and forced my way through the foliage. As I ran up the hill I panted, then rushed down the slopes and then headed in the direction where I thought Sabrina might be. 

  I ran faster. Sabrina's scream of horror broke the silence.

 The vehement cry from within the densest part of the forest diminished briefly, then it burst out nearer, louder, more urgent than before.

  Where did it come from?

  Again an agonized cry swept through the forest, accompanied by a deep-muttered rumble, menacing, rising, and falling with the murmur of the North Sea. 

 I heard one more despairing yell, then silence.  I stopped to listen.

 Nothing.

 Then I saw her.

  Sabrina Muller lay face down on the ground with her arms outstretched, head to one side, eyes open.  Blood soaked the surrounding ground.  Her clothes had almost been ripped from her, and she had clawed at the ground in an attempt to get away from her attacker.

 Her mobile phone lay on the ground, damaged, and smeared with blood.  I crouched and removed the SIM card from it.  She must have been trying to call someone and I wanted to know who.

  I checked my mobile.  No signal.

  Then I froze.  Someone or something was watching me. 

  My heart punched against my ribs. A movement to my left but no sound – not even the faintest crack of a twig or branch. Goosebumps scattered up my arms and down the centre of my back as a shiver passed through me. 

  Then through the corner of my eye, movement again.

  I turned and looked back along the way I’d come.  In the forest to the side of the path, about thirty feet away, something shifted.  A breeze flowed through the trees to my left, and the temperature dropped.  My eyes never left the spot between the trees.  I saw no other movement, heard no sound. Just the drip, drip, drip of rain.  And then, when that stopped, a pregnant hush as if something or someone sat in the silence, waiting to pounce.

  I watched for a few moments, not knowing what I expected to see.  Thunder boomed in the distance.

  Crack.

  I spun on my heel.  Vegetation moved.  Leaves snapped.  Rain hit the path.

  Then I sensed something behind me.

  A shape darted through the trees about twenty feet from me.  Bramble moved left to right, then back again.  It crouched, then moved another few feet and stopped. 

  The surrounding branches settled.

  Silence.

  I took a step forward.  Another step.  A patch of low-hanging branches about six feet in front of me moved.  Leaves rustled. 

  Then I heard a scratching noise.  I took a step closer, glancing down the path.  The forest had grown bigger and darker, and I heard more scratching and growling.  

  Thunder rumbled again.

  I turned slowly and then ran, heading right, around the thorns, and down towards the exit to the forest.  Rapid footsteps padded behind me. I kept running.  A tree loomed out of the dark and I grazed my arm against the bark, my body swerving too late to avoid it.  An ache shot through my muscles, into my shoulder.  I pushed it down with the rest of the pain and carried on.

   My lungs laboured, and I had to slow my pace. I could not find the entrance.

  Then I fell.

  My left foot clipped a tree root.  I tumbled head first, hitting the ground hard.  I collapsed onto my front and cried out in pain, believing I had broken my arm.  I looked round expecting the same fate that had befallen Sabrina Muller and Buster Bill but saw nothing.  No longer being followed, I scrambled to my feet and headed in the vague direction of the entrance.   The darkening sky turned from blue to grey, and the grey had become black by the time I reached the entrance.

  I got my phone out, saw I now had a signal and called the police. 

  For the next twenty minutes, I waited in the car park.  Pacing up and down but keeping clear of the entrance.  Every second tinged with foreboding and relentless tension.  The rain had stopped, but the wind blew eerie distorted tones. Panic gripped me as I thought about the blood-spattered, chaotic mess I had left behind.  In that enveloping darkness I’d almost slipped in the vast pools of blood around from Sabrina’s body.

  The police arrived in numbers and this time they were accompanied by two specialist firearms officers.  They unloaded from the back of an unmarked van.  One of them stood near me, checking a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, a Glock holstered at his hip.  The other talked to DI Silver, with the Detective Inspector pointing in my direction.

  The SFO approached me and all I could be his dark brown eyes that looked at me with intensity.  “We need you to show us where the body is.”

  I could tell by the tone of his voice he didn’t want me there, and I didn’t want to be there.  But I agreed to show them, even though I knew for sure something ominous surrounded this whole thing.  Something dangerous and sinister.

  “Are you taking forensics in?”

  “No, they’ll be on standby.  A paramedic and a dog support unit will be coming along, too, with DI Silver.”

  Nearby the other SFO cranked the chamber on his Glock.

  “Just in case,” I heard him say.

  We filed along the path back into the forest following the dog support unit.  The SFOs shone their torches as the darkness got thicker and the beams shone into the night and didn’t come back again.

  Up front, one of the dogs barked.  Everyone stopped.

  Silver moved to the front and joined the handler.  The two of them began talking as the spaniel on the end of the leash looked towards a swathe of black on the right. Behind me, the second dog, another spaniel, gazed in the same direction, its nose sniffing the air.  Silver turned around and told one of the SFOs to shine his flashlight into the undergrowth.  A second later, a patch of thick, tangled bush was illuminated by two great big chunks of oak tree.  No sign of anything.  Just tall grass swaying gently in the breeze, and a light drizzle passing across the circle of torchlight.

  We moved on.

  The forests were incredibly dark.  The canopy fully covered the path at this point and all we had were the two flashlights, passing back and forth across the path and what grew at its edges.  I wished I had one as once again I relied on other people when I only trusted myself.

  A little way down, one of the SFOs must have seen something reflect back at him.  He stopped and dropped to his haunches, scanning the area with his H&K. 

  Behind him the dogs barked again.  Both of them this time. They faced right, into the forest, nosed out, eyes fixed on something.  The other SFO shone his torch light into the undergrowth. The trees, leaves and bushes were freeze-framed for a second, rain coming down harder now.

  Silver went up ahead and chatted to the same handlers as before.  This time there was no breeze and everyone heard what they said.

  “What is it?” Silver asked.

  “No idea,” came the reply, but the handler didn’t sound convinced.  The dogs were highly trained to smell human blood.  They would not be disturbed by a hedgehog.  Everyone thought the same, and they all looked at me as if I might know what it is.

  One of the SFOs moved off the path and into the undergrowth as far as he could, shining his torch ahead of him.  Grass fell under his feet and then sprang back up again around him.  Beyond the tree trunks, a cone of light moved left and right.

  “Anything?”  His colleague asked from the trail.

  “Nothing,” he shouted back.

  He reappeared about a minute later, dew shining on his trousers and stab vest.

  About five minutes further on, we hit the clearing where Sabrina’s body lay.  The rain sounded heavier as it fell through the gap in the leaves.

   “Jesus Christ,” Silver exclaimed.

   The paramedic moved forward, her fluorescent jacket shining in the torchlight that pointed at the body.  One of the SFOs eyes searched the surrounding darkness.  His hands tightened on the barrel of the MP5.  The other one saw his partner’s movement and did the same.  I didn’t know what they had seen or heard, but they eyed something with suspicion.  Their torches flashed back and forth across the forest.

  Then something cracked in the forest to our left.

  The SFOs swung their guns around, scanning the area where the noise had come from.  The spaniels strained on their leashes, nosed out again, staring into the dark.  “What can you see?”  The handler asked.  The spaniels sniffed the air then returned to their original positions, primed for whatever had made the noise.

  “We need to go back,” I said with haste.

  Everybody stared at me, but Silver was the only one to react.

  “Why?”

  “You need to get out of these forest, right now.”  I persisted.  “Come back in the morning when it’s light.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Never more so.”

  “But the crime scene will be compromised.”

  I held out my hands.  “I think that has already happened in this weather, don’t you?”

  The rain made a chattering sound against the canopy and the wind picked up, too, blowing in from our right.  Leaves snapped.  Grass swayed.  As one of the SFOs scanned his torch, a patch of grass, coiled and twisted around the boot of a sycamore got caught in the beam.  Some of it had come loose and moved, making a gentle sigh like a voice.  I watched as both the SFOs directed their lights towards it, as if they thought they’d heard someone speaking.  But it was just this place.  The secrets and the lost lives.

  The temperature kept dropping.  The wind wailed mournfully through the trees and the rain on the edges of the leaves glistened in the torchlight, their branches caressing the earth like the withered fingers of some long-dead corpse.

  The darkness surrounded us, spinning our bearings this way and that.  One of the SFOs brought his MP5 up slowly to his shoulder.  Stock against his body.  Finger around the trigger.

  “There’s something out there,” he said quietly.

  “I think we should all leave now and return in the morning,” Silver said.

  We all jumped as the dogs, who had been quiet for a time, barked. My heart jumped, and I could feel a swelling panic building inside me. 

  “Okay, lets all retreat backwards along the path,” the SFO said. 

   We all moved away from the crime scene.  What else were we to do?  The panic in my stomach felt huge – a pulsating, swollen thing. I felt tears – tears of all things – pricking behind my eyes.  Why in heaven's name had I agreed to come back to the crime scene?

    The dogs stretched at their leashes, the handler struggling to control them.  Their claws scraped at the earth, their sharp teeth and pink gums exposed, flecks of froth at their mouths.

  The darkness moved.  Just the flicker of a shadow.  Rustling in the undergrowth among a thick tangle of grass and nettles.  On each side of us the forest grew thick and relentless, the occasional gap showing, but otherwise a twisted mess of branches and leaves.

  The downpour slowly ceased, melting into the darkness.  And as the sound of it dropped away, the wind came in its place and then a new noise followed.  A growling sound, and it was getting closer.

  I looked into the area of the source of the noise. Nothing.  Just swaths of thick, green bush. Under foot the ground squelched and moved.  As the wind increased, it came hard, the foliage whipping back and forth against our bodies, making us all shiver with the cold.  It whistled through the trees from the entrance behind us, as if drawn into the forest, vines swaying in the breeze.

  I grew disorientated.  We were all soaked through, and our breath formed in front of us like balls of spun sugar.  The SFOs remained focused, the dogs poised to protect us.

  “Did you see that?” one of the SFOs said.

  His colleague aimed his torch into the darkness.  A shape was behind the large oak tree I had fallen over earlier, its silhouette partly obscured.  For a moment the SFOs stood there, frozen to the spot, shoulder to shoulder, the two of them staring at the shape, the shape staring back.

  Out of nowhere, a sound tore across the night.

  It was so unexpected, so loud, it reverberated through the ground like an earthquake.

  “Keep moving back,” the senior SFO instructed.

  A sudden hush settled across Oxmarket forest, the wind dropping away, the rain easing off.  The other SFO raised his torch along with his MP5, aiming them both out into the dark.  The grass shone wet with rain, the clumps weird and disconcerting – like heads of hair; like hundreds of people were face down in the earth; lined up in shallow graves for as far as the eye could see.

  More movement to our right.

  The senior SFO didn’t see it, but his colleague did.  It was about a hundred feet away, on the fringes of the torchlight.  I swallowed, tensed and as I did, I felt a shift in the young paramedic’s body language and followed her gaze, out into the blackness.  The rain came down harder now, pounding at us, at our clothes, the sound like waves crashing on a pebble beach.  Every time I swallowed, it felt like I had chips of glass in my throat.

  “Okay,” the SFO said.  “Let’s go.”

  We all ran towards the entrance, beating a retreat.  I sensed the paramedic struggle, her legs dragging her, breath coarse and ragged.  I grabbed her hand, pulling at her arm, and, as I did, glimpsed something to the right.

  My heart hit my throat.

  Whatever it was, followed us.  I wanted to say something, to tell the paramedic, to warn her, but the words got lost.  Instead, I made a low grunt which instantly vanished in the rain, and then pulled her hand again, making sure she kept up, half concentrating on where we were heading, have focused on the forest to our right.  For the first time, I saw breath hissing out of the trees, like the forest itself was panting.

  “Quickly!”  I shouted.

  This time, the paramedic heard the terror in my voice and looked back over her shoulder.  She spotted something trailing us.  The paramedic screamed, and sobbed even harder, and I yanked at her again, almost dragging her along the path.

  Thirty feet to the entrance.

  “Come on!”  I shouted, pulling so hard at her arm it felt like I might tear it from its socket.  She shrieked in pain but didn’t let go of my hand.

  Twenty feet.

  “Come on!”  I shouted again and felt her move, accelerating, as if she realized we were close to the exit to the car park.  I glanced over my shoulder, searching for it in the trees behind us, but I couldn’t see it.

  Ten feet.

  I looked again and glimpsed something.

  We let go of each other’s hands when we reached the safety of the car park, followed by Silver, the dog handlers and the two SFOs, who were still walking backwards, their weapons still focused on the forest.

  From where we were, we could only see a few feet into the forest.

  But that was enough.

  Something stayed there on the edge for a moment, as if trying to keep from being seen, an obscure mass in the thick swirl of the darkness.  We all stood there watching it move back and forth, and I felt Kira at my side reaching for my hand, telling me we were safe now and telling me everything would be all right.

  And then I looked back through the entrance to the forest.

  Whatever had been out there had left?

Chapter Nine

 Higgins guided me to a marked police car and left me in the back while Silver briefed everyone not to venture into the forest until daylight.

  In the relative quiet of the car, I drifted off to sleep, exhausted and drained.  My body ached to down to my bones, my head hurt, my arm throbbed, but it wasn’t broken.  I tried to stay awake by counting the hours I’d actually slept in the last month, trying to pinpoint a night when I’d slept the entire way through.  I couldn’t remember.  That scared me.  I couldn’t actually remember sleeping through the night.  I’d forgotten what it even felt like.

  Before I knew it, my head rolled against my shoulder and I lurched awake, noting the car moving and Higgins driving me to the police station in Oxmarket, behind the Detective Inspector’s blue Volvo.

 I had to wait until the early hours before I could give my statement, which was fairly straightforward. Once I had finished, I signed the bottom of each page and then handed it to Silver.  He sat there reading it for a while and then gave me an uneasy smile.

  “Pity we didn’t see what it was, isn’t it?”

  “That’s a matter of opinion.”  I said.

  “I feel,” DI Silver began, “that I have unfairly plunged you into a dangerous case without proper regard for your safety.”

  “It’s not the first time you have done that,” I said, rather flippantly.

  “I know,” Silver said, “that in the first place you were called in for a brief assessment of the crime scene and the family involved.  You performed that task as you always do, admirably.  Suffolk Constabulary will always remain indebted to you.  But recently . . . Well, I have been under some pressure from above to temporarily suspend you from this investigation and any other forthcoming investigations.”

  “What?”  

  “Why did you chase that girl from the massage parlour?”

  “I wanted to question her about her involvement with ‘Buster’ Bill,” I explained.

  “You chased one of the suspects in this case through the town centre and into the forest, where she was brutally murdered.  I can’t have you roaming around a murder inquiry any more. Once again you’re pursuing your line of inquiry without telling anyone.”

  “But I’ve been successful in the past,” I pleaded.

  “Yes, you have,” he agreed.  “And I am sorry to have to say this, but you’re in danger of derailing the investigation that is getting a great deal of attention.  You’ve got the Suffolk Constabulary hierarchy backs up with your lateral thinking methods.  You trample on other people’s turf, and it seems, I’m sorry, but it seems sometimes that you do things without any reason. I mean without any proper reason.  I accept you’re upset by what happened. So are we all.  We all want to catch the perpetrator.  You’ve helped us,” he added more gently, “but I’m afraid the powers that we think it’s time to move on.”

  I stood up.  I had to pretend at least to be authoritative.  I walked to the window.  Outside was an area of virtual wasteland at the back of the police station.  There were three overflowing skips and some large metal bins, piles of planks, something covered by a tarpaulin.  Behind me, Silver proceeded to tell me that they’d keep my clothes and that they’d want to speak to me again once they had removed Sabrina Muller’s body from the forest and Kira had carried out the post-mortem.

  “People leave signatures behind,” I interrupted.  “Always, even when they try to cover it up because the signature of a murderer is a bit like the meaning of a poem.  There’s the meaning that the poet intended, but there may also be hidden meaning that the poet wasn’t conscious of.  Sometimes they think their signature is one thing, but it’s actually another.”  I hurried on, anxious to get to the end of my last stand before they lost interest entirely.  “What has caught my eye is that Buster Bill and Sabrina Muller were killed by the same breed of animal but not the same animal.”

  I paused and looked at Silver.  His expression remained passive, even pitying.  “What are you getting at, John?”

  “There are possibly two of the same creatures roaming the forest.”

  “Is that a fact or a hunch?”  Silver pressed.

  I said nothing and looked down at the floor.  

  “You’re not giving me anything.  All right, you’ve got a feeling.  True, we haven’t had the results of the post-mortem yet, but you’ve given me nothing to take to the people who think you’ve been wasting our time.”

  I rubbed my eyes with my fingers.  I had said my piece and my mind felt empty.  He was right. What was there, after all in what I’d said?  What was there to do?  I didn’t want to think, I wanted to crawl away, but with a last effort, I managed to retrieve something minimal from the corner of my mind.

  “OK,” I said in a low voice.  “I’m finished.  I’ll just say one last thing.  Buster Bill’s body was virtually pulled to pieces, while Sabrina Muller’s body was brutally mutilated but not to the same degree.”

  “You know we don’t know that yet,” Silver said, irritably.

  “Look closely at the evidence,” I reiterated.  “And that is my last suggestion.”

  “I will do so,” he said.  “But in the meantime, try and keep out of trouble.”

  I stopped at the door.

  “Why didn’t they shoot?”

  “What?”

  “The SFOs. Why didn’t they shoot?”

  “I don’t know what you are getting at, John.”

  “Oh I think you do, Paul.”

  He stood up.  His fists clenched.

  “You want to choose your next words carefully, John.”

  “Very well,” I could feel the anger bubbling inside me.  “Can you explain why two highly trained Special Firearm Officers did not engage whatever it was in the forest?  And why the dog handler did not release the spaniels to see what was tracking us?”

  “The SFOs did not have clear shot, and the dogs were too wound up.”

  I laughed.  A laugh with no feeling.

  “You keep on telling yourself that, Paul.”  I pulled the door open wide.  “And you might believe it one day.”

  “What are you accusing me of?”

  “I’m just wondering whether the reasons you have given me for removing me off the case, are the ones you have given me.”

  “I’m not a liar.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Are you threatening me?”  He moved out from behind his desk and stopped a few feet away from me.  “I don’t take kindly to threats.”

  “I don’t make threats Paul, you know that.  But I do make promises and I promise you I will find out what is going on, whether I’m being paid by the police or not.”

  “Careful whose toes you tread on, John.”

  And with that, I left his office.