Читать книгу The Present: The must-read Christmas Crime of the year! - D Devlin S - Страница 9

A patrol car carried Anna across town to Hampstead. En route, she called Miles’s number. He picked up almost at once. Anna guessed at once that he was struggling to sleep. Even now, nearly three years after his inexplicable trauma, he was still pacing around at three in the morning.

‘Sorry to spring this on you, Miles, but I need a place for the night. Right now. Something’s happened.’

‘Oh God, are you okay? Where are you?’

‘I’m fine. I’m in a police car heading towards you. Can you put me up?’

‘I’ll put the kettle on at once!’ Miles said, and he spoke with such seriousness that Anna could not help but burst out laughing, despite everything. Perhaps it was nerves as much as anything else.

The uniformed officer driving the patrol car shot her a glance, but Anna ignored it.

‘Miles, you truly are an angel of mercy,’ she said. ‘I’ll explain everything when I get to you.’

When they reached Miles’s Hampstead townhouse, all the downstairs lights were blazing in the deep, cold darkness of the December night. The uniformed officer watched from the car as Anna hurried along the front drive and rang the bell. He didn’t pull away again until Miles had opened the door and taken her inside.

As promised, the kettle was indeed on. Miles moved about the kitchen making them both coffee, his mop of dark hair as chaotic and unruly as ever, but now flecked with grey. There were dark lines under his eyes, brought about by stress and chronic insomnia, but despite all that there was still an air of boyishness lingering about him, an indomitable spirit of life and humour that had not been crushed out of him by his ordeal and which Anna believed was the life-support system which kept him going even in his darkest moments.

‘So – what’s the mess you’ve got yourself into?’ Miles asked, passing her a steaming mug of coffee. ‘Tell Uncle Miles all about it – from the beginning.’

‘I can’t quite get my head around it myself! It’s all happened so suddenly.’

‘Is it something to do with that awful Sharon Steiner business?’

‘God, Miles, how did you know?’

Miles shrugged: ‘An educated guess. When you rang me earlier you were railing about CID having a serial killer on their hands that they were too incompetent to catch. I’m guessing the killer you were referring to is Santa. He’s struck again, hasn’t he? I don’t get out much but I still keep a close eye on the news.’

‘Yes, it’s Santa. Do you know anything about him?’

‘I remember he was one of the unsolved cases I was looking into years ago. But I didn’t get the chance to go too deeply into it, my attention was on a number of other cases at that time. Santa’s been operating for … oh, let me think, it must be at least ten years by now.’

‘Twelve. He’s been getting away with it for twelve years.’

‘And you’ve set your sights on seeing that he doesn’t get away with it for another twelve years, I take it,’ said Miles. ‘But something’s not gone according to plan – hence your sudden, though not at all unwelcome, arrival in a police car at three in the morning.’

‘I’ve attracted his attention,’ Anna said. ‘I’ve shown up on his radar.’

‘Shown up on whose radar?’

‘Santa’s. He knows about me, Miles. He knows where I live. And a few hours ago, he came to my flat.’

Miles jolted, spilling his coffee half over the table and half over himself. Anna at once grabbed some paper towels and set about mopping him up, like a mother with a clumsy child.

‘Sorry about that,’ Miles apologised, his voice sounding tighter and edgier than before. ‘The thought of that monster getting close to you … it really upset me.’

‘Well, I’m fine,’ Anna said emphatically. ‘Well, I say fine, what I mean is that nobody hurt me. But I did receive a present.’

‘A present? A present from Santa? Wh … What sort of present?’

In her mind’s eye, Anna could vividly see herself tearing away the wrapping paper, unlatching the clasps on the plastic box, opening the lid and being hit by that stomach-churning stink of putrefying flesh …

She shook her head to clear it, then said: ‘Something awful. Blood. Bits. A present from a serial killer.’

‘And you rang the police straight away, I take it.’

‘Of course. DI Jim Townsend’s on the case. Do you know him?’

‘The name doesn’t ring any bells. But Anna, I’m much more concerned about how Santa knows where you live and why he’d show up like that. What have you been doing to get yourself noticed by him?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve been looking into the Santa case and asking why CID have been so hopeless in making progress with it. I’ve got an answer to that, by the way. Jim Townsend’s not nearly as incompetent as he’s been making himself look. It’s all been an act to make Santa feel overconfident. The hope is he’ll get too sure of himself and make a fatal mistake.’

‘But how does Santa know about you?’ Miles pressed her.

‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s aware of me from the Underwood case back in the summer.’

‘Why would he care about that? I know enough about serial killers to know that they’re interested in nothing but themselves. Even their victims are just extensions of their own psychological needs. Why would Santa come to your front door and leave blood and bits for you like that? And how the hell would he know where you live?’

‘Miles, I can’t answer any of that.’

‘Well, you’re not going back to your flat tonight. You’re staying right here where I can look after you. I’d die before I let Santa or anyone else touch so much as a hair on your head.’

‘Let’s hope it won’t come to anything like that.’

‘I’m serious, Anna. I mean it.’

‘I know you do,’ Anna smiled, and she reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘Jim Townsend’s got people watching my flat in case Santa shows up there again.’

‘He won’t. He’s too careful.’

Anna nodded: ‘He is careful. Careful enough to be getting away with murder for twelve years. But now he’s fixed his attentions on me – for whatever reason – he’s going to make contact again, one way or another. He’s playing his game, you see. His “Twelve Days of Christmas” game.’

‘Twelve Days of Christmas? You mean, partridges in pear trees and all that?’

‘He’ll send in a series of messages based on the Twelve Days of Christmas. Whether they’re clues as to how to find him, or taunts, or just sick sadistic jokes that he gets a kick out of, God alone knows. But it’s how he operates, and he’s stickler for his own procedures. He’ll work his way through all twelve messages, and if we don’t find him before he reaches the last one he’ll murder Sharon Steiner and disappear again, just like he always does.’

‘And then pop up again next Christmas or the Christmas after that, and start the whole awful game over again,’ Miles said.

‘I can’t let that happen, Miles. We can’t let that happen.’

‘We?’

‘I want to find Santa and save Sharon Steiner, and I want you to help me, Miles. Jim Townsend and his team at CID are determined to crack this case but I don’t think they’ll manage it. Santa’s been running rings around the police for over a decade, he knows how to out-think them. But he doesn’t know how to out-think me