[Alicia Friend 01.0] His First His Second Read online

  Alicia stepped on the crunchy snow, hand freezing on the gun, terrified of having to use it. She almost thanked this man she thought she’d known. Instead, she tried to read if the shame in his eyes was genuine, or another facet of his camouflage.

  “By the way, you’re under arrest for the murders of Melanie Sykes and Doyle Underwood. Amongst other things.” She read him his rights, slammed the door closed, and started up the drive.

  Shivering, under a moonless sky, tramping headlong into dark grounds holding an evil she had never dreamt possible, Alicia Friend removed the pink scrunchies, shook the pigtails out of existence, and let her hair fall dead around her.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Katie couldn’t even try to fight him off now. Her breathing was steady but her throat was still not right. Air was getting in but only through a small gap. And she wanted to fight. She wanted to fight so much. He held her in his arms like a baby.

  He entered silently several minutes earlier, locked the door again, and came down the stairs. The sword he’d promised Siobhan never materialised. It was still the mallet. Katie wondered what he would have done had Siobhan shot her as he asked. But Katie was still his First—it was the rule, he said—and he wanted her to hold the rubber mallet, pleading with her to take it, accept his gift, to destroy the Second, so he could bring her a final test. But Katie couldn’t even hold the tool.

  She had managed to raise her arms onto the sides of the bath, held there by her elbows. She extended her neck as high as she could, levering her lungs open with her arms high-up, and begun to breathe as near to normal as she had in a long time. But when she refused to take the mallet, he grew angry, accusing her of more trickery, more betrayal, betraying him again and again. When it was clear she wasn’t faking, he pulled her from the bath and held her tightly.

  “I’m so sorry, Rachel,” he said over and over. “I’m so sorry. I never meant this. I don’t want to lose you again.”

  Katie would have told him to piss off if she’d had the strength, but she felt like a rubber doll, unable to move a single limb more than a few floppy inches at a time.

  Siobhan wept in the corner farthest from them. The man continued to stroke Katie’s hair, apologising to her for how everything had turned out.

  The gun sat heavily in Alicia’s jacket pocket, another set of handcuffs in the opposite one. She felt like a cowboy carrying his own saddlebags. She peeked through the large brass letterbox and heard voices. One of them was Ball. Good. She’d not sent him to his death.

  Alicia rang the bell and Henry himself answered. He looked her up and down. She did the same to him: a pompous middle aged man feigning respectability. He might not have killed his niece, but he was equally as responsible as James. She briefly wondered what he thought of her tattered clothes and jacket, sopping wet trouser legs, and a once-white blouse now stained with small amounts of Alfie Rhee’s blood and a good deal of her own sweat. Her face was probably filthy, and her hair ragged, curly in places where the silly pigtails hung. She was so tired from the walking and the cold that she could fall asleep right there in the hall.

  And she was not smiling.

  “Come in, Detective,” Henry said. “Your colleague is already here. And, might I add, a sight better dressed.”

  She followed him into the same over-the-top study she’d been in before, and Ball greeted her with, “What the hell happened to you?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “I need Henry here to take us to Katie and Siobhan.”

  He reacted like a rooster bristling his feathers, inhaled to plump up his chest. Opened his mouth to utter a denial.

  “Save it, Henry.” Alicia produced the gun.

  Ball backed up, fell onto the chaise-longue. Henry came up against the mantelpiece.

  Alicia could have asked a few questions, run him in circles, tripped him up on the inconsistencies. She’d run it through her head on the walk up the drive, even had a plan of attack. But she was sick of doing that. Sick of the games, the subterfuge. Focus on getting the girls, she told herself. Arrest the bad guy, then go home and have a good long bath, and unload this whole shitty week on Roberta’s broad shoulders. It’s what friends are for, after all.

  Alicia pulled the trigger. A bang rang out, far louder than she’d expected, and the PC monitor on Henry’s desk imploded. Richard wasn’t kidding about the recoil, but she was sure she made it look bad-ass.

  “Jesus!” Ball cried, skittering further away.

  Henry’s eyes widened. “How dare you? This is not allowed!”

  She’d found Henry Windsor unpleasant and fake at first. Then she’d disliked him, the caged birds setting off that emotion. Then she’d grown to fear him, that anyone could be as cold and calculating as this. But since discovering the truth about Richard, someone she’d thought of as a wonderful human being, like Murphy and his scum-sucking mingers, now Alicia found the man boring.

  “The next one,” she said, “goes in your knee.”

  He shut up.

  “Alicia…” Ball said cautiously.

  Using her first name, putting her at ease, building rapport. Rubbish trick.

  “Please,” Ball said. “Let me call in. We need more help out here. I don’t suppose you got that warrant in the end.”

  “No. This prick has too many pals. It ends. And I won’t implicate anyone else in this. I just want the girls safe.”

  “Then we need back up. There’s no way we’ll search the grounds alone.”

  “That’s why he’s going to tell me where they are.”

  “I don’t know, I swear it!” Henry said.

  Another shot and a bullet tore through Henry’s left thigh. He went down, clutching the wound, surprisingly not making much noise.

  Alicia’s ears rang.

  “Please, Alicia,” Ball said. “This isn’t right. Let me call in.”

  She considered it. They might need help soon. “Fine. Do it. Call in.”

  “My mobile’s in the car.”

  “Use that one.”

  Ball edged past Alicia, hands up. Her eyes followed him but the gun remained on Henry. He went for the phone on the table next to the door.

  “It’s dead,” he said, replacing the receiver.

  “Oh, dear God,” Henry said, straining to stem the flow. “We have to get out of here.”

  He pulled himself up, gingerly trying his leg. It wouldn’t support him.

  “We’re going nowhere,” Alicia said. “Where are the phone lines controlled from?”

  “The garage. The underground garage.”

  The old air-raid shelter. It was open, light, the only places to hide being behind cars. If that’s where the phones were cut, it might still be worth checking out.

  “Walk,” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then hobble. It’s a good clean wound. Can’t hurt that much.”

  He gestured to an umbrella stand. She tossed him a walking stick. He tested it. He’d move, but slowly. Blood seeped from the bullet hole.

  Alicia took Ball’s tie from him, the gun in her armpit, then knelt and tied it around Henry’s leg.

  “Now,” she said, pointing the gun again. “Take us to James.”

  “He’s not here I tell you,” Henry said.

  “We’ll see.”

  When the second shot rang out, Richard’s heart jumped. It was too long after the first. He was glad when he heard that one, readying himself for Katie running down the drive into his arms, the killer, this James lad, either being led in handcuffs or dragged out on a gurney. If still alive, Richard decided to kill him anyway. Alicia’s actions were illegal, totally reckless. Richard knew he’d never see the outside world again, not after tonight, so what did extinguishing one more undesirable matter? Better to see him finished for good than escape on technicalities.

  But the second shot could have meant anything.

  He put his free left hand against the door, and with his cuffed right he gave a good solid yank. The handle
snapped away immediately. He could have done this at any time, but Alicia needed to feel safe, that he could not harm her. And he never would. He’d die first.

  Although no longer attached to the van, the cuffs were still locked on his wrist, but there was no time to deal with that. He climbed out and opened the rear door. His knives were still there. Alicia confiscated them as evidence. He opened it and picked up the hunting knife. He weighed it in his hand, holding it up to what he thought would be moonlight, but the clouds hid all light away. It didn’t feel right. It was the most effective of them all, the messiest too, but he needed something else. His special occasion knife still lay on the van’s floor, where Alfie dropped it. The leather grip, the perfectly honed blade. Yes. This was the one.

  He closed the door and ran into the woods, avoiding the drive in case of cameras. He needed to be sure Alicia wasn’t screwing this up, that Katie would be free, that the person responsible was punished.

  The woods ended and Richard squatted at the periphery. Trees were dotted all around the enormous house, before once again becoming forest. He ducked lower as Alicia led a man in a green smoking jacket at gunpoint, the man limping badly on a walking stick. One of the detectives followed, the one with the beard. The fat man ducked into his car, only to come back, shrugging, disappointed. He had a stick of some sort though. They all followed the vague outline of a path, circling around the back of the house. The limping man shouted, “What do I have to do to convince you? He is not here!”

  Richard, skirting close to the cover of trees, stalked after them.

  Alicia was beginning to believe him, or at least believe that Henry believed it. When they discovered his son umpiring a human cockfight, she wondered how surprised the man would be. The fact that Ball’s phone had no reception, and the radio too, meant they were all alone. The only means of communication was the phone Alicia left in the van, which would have to be driven to higher ground to work. And she didn’t want Ball risking a meeting with Richard. Not armed only with the baton he carried in the car.

  They rounded the house, arrived at the entrance to the garage. Henry inserted the key and turned. When they’d first visited, the roller-door simply opened and they stepped inside. This time, the lift had to rise to get here.

  Alicia explained to Ball the size of the room, the cars. When the lift door opened, Ball gave it the once over, whistled as if impressed. Alicia and Henry got in, Alicia stopping Ball.

  “If I’m not out in ten minutes,” she said, “go and get help. There’s a van at the bottom of the drive. Be careful of the man inside. He’s cuffed but dangerous.”

  “You might need help now,” Ball said. “Down there.”

  “I need someone to watch my back. I need a guard.”

  Henry pressed the down button. The shutter closed, Ball ducking for one last look at them.

  Silently, the lift descended.

  Henry leaned on the wall, resting his leg. Alicia checked he wasn’t about to jump her or something. She was dying to ask but didn’t dare. If he replied how she thought he would, it was not even worth considering. It might make her complacent.

  The door opened to the glare of the underground garage. Cars gleamed, the X-Type retaining pride of place in the centre. Pictures stared in from the walls. It was silent but for the hum of the lights.

  She asked the question anyway. “Do you really believe James isn’t responsible?”

  “He can’t be,” Henry said. “It isn’t possible.”

  “Where is he? Where could he hide down here?”

  “He couldn’t.”

  Alicia stepped out into the space. She pointed the gun ahead of her, as she’d seen ARV folk do, though she hadn’t a clue how she’d react if the young man came at her. Could she do it? Kill a fellow human being?

  She lay on the floor and scanned under the cars. Nothing.

  “I’ll check the phone lines,” Henry said, hobbling towards a case the size of a bedside cabinet next to a mounted life-sized photo of a Ferrari Testarossa.

  As he fiddled with the cabinet, Alicia examined each car. She needed a sign, something. Blood would have been a good start. But the only blood here was the footprints that formed each time Henry took a step. She was beginning to regret shooting him. It was unnecessary.

  “You’re sure there’s nothing else down here?” Alicia said. “Nowhere else to hide?”

  The lift door rattled in the echoing space. Both jumped, startled. Then it began to rise. Ball, she supposed, getting cold or worried. But stay alert, Alicia. Don’t assume anything.

  Recovering from the shock, Henry said to her, “No. The only other thing down here is the old bathroom. And we bricked that up when this place was built.”

  Alicia scanned the walls. “Where? Where is it?”

  “They’ve been cut,” Henry said, finishing his assessment. “Someone cut them.”

  “Where?” she said again, now approaching him as menacingly as she could. “Where was the bathroom?”

  “Oh, over there.” He pointed at another car picture, this one a Land Rover going vertically up a mountain, again life-sized. “We hung that photograph over it.”

  During the last few days, Alicia had often wondered if there was more at work here, more than a series of murders. But nothing she had seen prepared her for what followed.

  On Henry’s words, We hung that photograph over it, the framed picture moved. It shuddered and then shifted slightly forward. Then, on a hinge at the left-hand side, it swung open to reveal a pitch black doorway, gaping like a hole in the world.

  Alicia aimed the gun into the blackness. “James?”

  “It’s not James,” Henry said. “It can’t be him.”

  “Quiet. James? This is the police. I’m armed. Come out with your hands over your head.”

  Henry shook his head. In denial. A father’s denial. “It isn’t him. It isn’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just am.”

  She could hear movement down there, in the black pit. “James? Come on out. Let them go.”

  “It isn’t James, I know it isn’t.”

  Alicia’s frustration outran her fear. “How the hell can you be so sure?”

  The gunshot from inside the doorway flashed and then boomed, and a red cloud burst from Henry’s chest. He stood upright a moment. The blood seeped from the entry wound, a little to the right of his heart, and Henry Windsor fell flat on his face.

  “He knows it isn’t James,” came a familiar voice from within the darkness, “because he watched as I garrotted him.”

  And the man who’d seemed so harmless, so overweight and benign, Lawrence—the butler—emerged, aiming a gun straight down Alicia’s throat.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Holding an automatic pistol firm in one hand, he emerged from the black dressed like a soldier. Lawrence, the butler Tanya had brought with her when she came to live with James and his parents, the man who served her mother and father, the cripple, now not so crippled, striding confidently out into the garage, dressed all in black, like some special ops guy in an 80s action movie.

  “James was a sick child,” Lawrence said. “His mother … his sweet mother … killed like that … then Tanya’s too … Rachel … such a senseless death.”

  Sad as he looked, it was his size that struck Alicia. Sat in the wheelchair he appeared overweight, the way Alicia would expect Ball or Cleaver to look in the same position. But it was muscle. He must have been about late fifties, but he’d kept all his size, slouched to hide it. Ex-army, a good aim no doubt; he had to be to shoot Henry from his angle. And now he threatened Alicia at gunpoint.

  But she was not exactly helpless.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You have a gun. I have a gun. But I’ve taken bullets before. Have you? Do you know what to expect? A thump in the chest, then burning as the little metal pellet tears through muscle and bone, bursting out the other side, leaving an exit wound the size of my fist.”
r />   She raised the weapon, eyes on his legs. “So the physio Tanya paid for was more effective than you let on.”

  “A necessary ruse,” he said. “Tanya’s fund paid for several operations during my time here, and continued my treatment even after she was taken. Including the physio. Poor old Henry had no idea of the progress I’d made.”

  The blood from Henry’s chest reached her feet. He gasped for breath. With no idea how badly the man was hurt, she stepped to the side, holding the gun out, trying not to shake.

  She said, “James?”

  “He was an animal.” The man was not shouting, but the undertones in his voice were pure anger.

  “None of you wanted Tanya to leave you. With Henry it was because of the money. You and James, you wanted her here.”

  “Clever girl. And what else?”

  “You were hurt. In Iraq. The Republican Guard made you fight amongst yourselves, made bets, like James did with the animals. He did that because of the stories you told him.”

  “I cared for the boy. But he thought my injuries were ‘cool’, that my barbaric stories were, in his words, ‘awesome’. Tanya’s father was part of the brigade that rescued me and brought me back to reality. I served on as a cook, but this had been my profession before the war and provided for me, enabled me to go back to it. He was a good man, Peter Windsor. A good man who married a woman of such compassion … I just can’t say.” He had made ground on Alicia without her noticing. Now he was too close. “But James and his father were fools. I told James about the reality of war, showed him my scars.”

  “But he thought that was even cooler, right?”

  “You are clever.”

  “What did he do?” Alicia said, focusing on her fingers. Squeeze, don’t pull. “It was Tanya, wasn’t it? He did something to her.”

  “When Tanya fled, James said he killed her. That was never the plan.”

  “No. You wanted her to see sense. To keep her here. To make her happy. Do what you thought her parents wanted, those people you admired so much.”