Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(19)

She stopped, and couldn’t move. Afterwards, she would ask herself why she hadn’t turned and run – she had been less than sixty seconds away from her front door – and why she hadn’t fought back, or shouted out for help? Instead, she stood there, paralysed with fear as the tall figure came closer. Loomed over her. He moved with a soft creaking sound, and as her eyes adjusted a little to the dark, she saw he wore a gas mask. The two large eyeholes were blank, and rubber material stretched up and over his head like a hood. Vapour streamed out from the large breathing drum hanging down. White squares were painted on the drum, and it looked like a grotesque smiling mouth. There was a faint chemical smell about him as his breathing quickened, and she saw that his coat was open and he was exposing himself, masturbating with a gloved hand.

Diana opened her mouth to scream, but it was cut short when he grabbed her by the throat and pinned her to the cold bricks, his powerful leather-gloved hand tightening around her neck. It was all so quiet, and she gagged and choked, wishing she would pass out. Just as the edges of her vision started to go black, he loosened his grip enough for her to take a breath, then his hand tightened again.

Outside the underpass, the road remained empty. The snow fell. Everything was quiet and still.





Twelve





Erika arrived home late to a cold flat. In the two years she’d lived there, she hadn’t got around to figuring out how the timer on the boiler worked. The first thing she did when she got in was flick on the heating, and she kept her coat on until it started to warm up.

She then ran a bath, with the water boiling hot, almost too hot to bear. The scalding water helped her to block things out, and made her forget about work, but despite the hot water, she couldn’t shake off the image of Marissa Lewis’s body lying in the snow. A crime scene always tells a story, and the small front garden in Coniston Road told of a violent struggle. The sheer volume of blood, caking Marissa’s body and the surrounding snow. Her shoe, left lying close by; her vanity case, broken on its side, the contents spilling out into the snow. Her keys still dangling in the lock of the front door. If Marissa had reached her door a few seconds earlier, would she have been able to turn the key and get safely inside?

Erika found it a struggle, the balance between feeling sorrow for a murder victim, and shutting it out. To stay sane, it was easier to dehumanise a dead body, and think of the person as an object: a thing, or a piece of evidence. Erika could never do that, though, any more than she could come home from work and live a normal life. She didn’t have anyone to come home to. Since Mark’s death, she had been involved in a relationship with her colleague, Detective Inspector James Peterson, and for a time he had been someone she could come home to – or more precisely, she would go to his place and they would watch television and eat takeaway and laugh. Then Peterson had been badly injured in the line of duty: shot in the stomach, on Erika’s watch, at the climax of an abduction and murder case. His subsequent battle to recover and return to work had driven a wedge between them. It had been a messy end to a promising relationship. And she was left alone again, for endless evenings with her thoughts.

The image of Marissa Lewis’s tooth embedded in the brickwork of the gate post swam into her head. She closed her eyes, but it was still there: broken off, close to the gum, and daubed with a smudge of red lipstick. Erika opened her eyes and added fresh hot water to the bath. Her usually pale legs were an angry red from the heat. In her mind’s eye, she saw Marissa’s blood-spattered legs in the picture taken from high in the tree. The folds of her long winter coat, open in the snow. Then she saw the crime scene, and Isaac crouching down beside the body. The thin material of the dress hitched up to expose Marissa’s underwear. The underwear had been spotless. There had been no blood, and a neat strip of pubic hair had shown through the sheer material.

Erika yanked out the plug, and stepped out, wrapping herself in a towel. She hurried through to the living room, where she had her laptop and the case file laid out on the coffee table. The lights were off, and the curtains were still open. Snow was falling again. It made a dry rustling sound as it hit the glass. She went to her computer and clicked through the photos taken by Joseph. First, the ones high up in the tree, and then the close-ups.

‘You sick little shit,’ she murmured, flicking between the two different perspectives and zooming in. ‘You lifted up her skirt when you came down from the tree…’

Erika’s phone rang, making her jump. She checked the time and saw it was just after 11 p.m. It was Edward, asking if she had enjoyed lunch.

‘I didn’t go in the end. I was called out to a crime scene,’ she said. ‘Very sad. A young girl, murdered on her doorstep.’

‘Oh. Do you want to talk about it?’

‘Not really. It’s too dark and gruesome for Christmas. Did you have a good day?’

‘I had a bit of a party, as it turns out,’ he laughed. ‘Kelly from down the road popped over with her mother, Shirley. They brought over a big lasagne and Monopoly. It was Manchester Monopoly. Guess where the most expensive street is?’

‘Coronation Street?’

‘No. I thought the same. It’s the Lowry on Salford Quays. It’s the same price as Park Lane on the London version. I don’t think you can win Monopoly unless you fork out for the best real estate.’