The Sister(79)

All the lights were out; he navigated his way up to the base of the stairs; the coin-sized beam of his penlight generated a sufficient spill of light to enable him to avoid obstacles like chairs and discarded shoes. He ascended the staircase to the top landing. With all the doors shut, he was reliant on his inner compass to confirm that the door on his far right corresponded with the last light he’d seen turned off. He moved close to it and listened at the hairline gap where the door met the frame. He heard the sound of regular, deep breathing. Two long minutes passed and the first gentle rumblings of snoring began. Once he was sure she was asleep; he took a small bottle of liquid from his pocket. Catching a whiff of its sweet, seductive odour as he unscrewed the lid, he was surprised that such a small exposure could have snatched his breath away. He poured a measure of the solution onto the wadding, folded it and silently opened the door. He made a point of waking her just as the wad covered her nose and mouth.

Her eyes snapped open with sleepy surprise, immediately followed by wide-eyed fear, a futile struggle, momentary disbelief when she finally registered what was happening, and then she succumbed to blissful unconsciousness.

He was already hard and he salivated as he fitted the condom. Seconds later, she was his. The rustling of the paper suit and his own ragged breathing were the only sounds he heard.

When he’d finished, he carefully extricated himself from her. She was still unconscious. Retreating downstairs back to the kitchen, he unscrewed the lid from the makeshift delivery apparatus, leaving the jar on the side in the kitchen.

Once back outside in the garden, he slit the tape from the overshoes, removed the paper suit and gloves and put all of it inside the bin bag. He knotted it tightly.

Crossing the park to the far end in the darkness and checking all round to make sure he was unobserved, he stopped to hide the bag, tucking it right in underneath a timber bridge that crossed over a deep water-filled ditch.

He climbed the park fence, silently dropping down on the other side; he made his way down the alley, back to where he’d left the car, four hundred yards further up the road.





Chapter 63



The telephone rang, insistently edging its way into his consciousness. At first it fitted with the dream he was having, he even interrupted the dream conversation to say. ‘I must get that.’

In a sleepy daze, he rolled over onto his side and answered the phone.

‘Tanner,’ he mumbled.

It was Kennedy. ‘Sorry to disturb, but I need you to report to an incident in Blake Street, number 27. Are you listening?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said, forcing his eyes to open wide, trying to blink away the cobwebs of sleep.

‘Good, only I couldn’t hear anything. It’s overlooking the park, not far from your place.’

‘What’s this all about, sir?’

‘Number 27 Blake Street,’ he repeated. ‘A woman was raped tonight in her own home by some freak wearing a gasmask.’

He looked at his watch. 1:29 a.m. Oh, great!





He arrived at the scene twenty minutes later.

Outside on the driveway, was an ambulance. Although the curtains were drawn, half a dozen shadowy silhouettes were clearly backlit, moving around purposefully.

The front door opened unexpectedly; Tanner stepped to one side, allowing the exiting paramedics to pass. They carried the victim out on a stretcher, covered with a blanket up to her chin, an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. She didn’t look much older than his daughter. He watched as they loaded her into the back of the ambulance.

‘This is going to be a long night,’ he muttered wearily.





Chapter 64



Tanner almost overslept. Some internal mechanism dragged him into consciousness and sifting dreamily through his jumbled thoughts; one came crashing to the fore. It’s Sunday.

The double helping of coffee he drank before he left, did little to help him shrug off the sleepiness that trawled on his senses, it was a state that evaporated the instant he walked into the public bar. At least half the windows had been smashed and then subsequently boarded over. The darkness contrasted sharply with the brightness outside. He guessed the landlord had given up putting glass back in. His eyesight now adjusted to the dim light, he scanned the room. All eyes were on him.

Look out for a dark-haired guy about thirty, wearing a gold belcher chain with a golden boxing gloves charm hanging down. At least two other men fitted the bill, but his man had been looking out for him. Pulling him over to the bar, the boxer said, ‘Are you looking for me, boy?’ Introducing himself as the writer Ed Quinn, he shook hands with the middleweight. His name was Paul Kelly; he looked far heavier than his fighting weight, but that wasn’t uncommon. He knew enough to know that these guys often blew up in weight between fights, and then trained it off a few weeks before the next one.

Kelly’s face, bronzed from a life of working outdoors, had stubbly five o’clock shadow on his high flat cheeks, and hair shaven at the back and sides, leaving a crown of longer dark hair slicked back and oily looking. His features were relatively unmarked. A clever fighter, he thought.

‘So you’re writing about the greatest knuckle fighters are you? Will I be in it, boy?’

‘If you are a great fighter, you can be sure of it!’ Tanner joked.

‘Do you want to be finding out?’ Kelly looked serious as he indicated the door.