He slammed the boot shut, and ran after her, but she was already through the gate and had managed to get her key in the front door. As she got it open, he charged in behind her and they went crashing down on the floor in the hallway. He kicked the front door shut, and there was a strange sweaty fumble as Bryony tried to push him off, but he climbed on top of her.
His hands found her throat and he gripped hard, pressing down with his thumbs and squeezing. She grabbed at his hands, scratching his arms, then shoved her knee upwards, crushing his balls. He crumpled over and Bryony heaved herself up, pushing him against the wall as she ran off up the dark hallway.
Darryl lay curled up in pain, trying to catch his breath. His eyes were getting used to the dark, and he could see he was lying near the bottom of a staircase. Bryony was making strange whimpering sounds, and he heard her fumbling about, opening a drawer. She was in the kitchen, and she was looking for a knife.
Darryl staggered up, feeling around on the wall, and found a light switch. As he turned it on, Bryony came charging towards him with a kitchen knife, her eyes wide. He stood his ground, leapt to one side and, almost comically, she ploughed into the front door. He moved behind her and slammed her against it, seizing the wrist holding the knife, and banging it against the doorframe until she dropped it. He grabbed the back of her hair and slammed her face into the door: once, twice. She slid down onto her backside, and was still.
He stood, sweating and shaking, and then spied the landline phone sitting in its dock on a low table. He yanked the cord out of the wall and dragged Bryony back by her hair to the base of the stairs. There was a bloody gash on her forehead where he’d kicked her, and her nose was broken. He started to wind the cord around her neck. She opened her eyes and began to struggle, but he kneeled on her stomach and pulled back, holding the two ends of the cord like reins, pressing his knees into her stomach and pulling his arms up, tightening the cord around her neck. She made some gurgling screeching noises, and her hands scrabbled at the cord. He kneeled harder, felt her ribs crack, and yanked the cord upwards. Her face went purple, she gagged and her feet flailed, and finally, she was still.
Darryl got up and threw down the ends of the telephone cord. He stood back, breathless. Still in the hallway, he caught sight of himself in a large mirror on the wall: wild-eyed and dishevelled. A clock ticked above the doorway leading off towards a living room, and he saw that it was now 9 p.m. He checked he hadn’t dropped anything, and wiped down the phone cord with the corner of his shirt. He picked up Bryony’s limp arms, dragged her body through to the living room, and left it behind a large sofa. Now if anyone looked through the front door, or the living room window, they wouldn’t see anything amiss.
* * *
Darryl emerged from Bryony’s flat into the empty cul-de-sac. He was now certain his DNA was all over the hallway, but there was nothing he could do. He had no criminal record, and as far as he could tell, without his DNA, the police had nothing to link him to the dead girls. This was bad. He’d killed her; he’d killed Bryony. The woman he sat opposite at work… His colleagues had seen them together.
He went to the car and got in. He drove away and kept to the speed limit all the way home, stopping once in a lay by where he threw up. He held out his hands as a car passed bathing him in bright light and he saw he had Bryony’s blood on his left hand. He wiped it on the seat of his trousers.
Then another thought came to him: Beth had had a phone when he’d taken her! He went to the boot of the car and opened it. She lay still, her nose bloody. He rummaged around under her leg and found it. Car headlights appeared again and he slammed the boot shut, keeping his head down. When it had passed, he dropped the phone and ground it into the tarmac until the screen splintered. He then wiped it down and threw it far into a bank of trees. He got back in the car and concentrated on driving the rest of the way back to the farm.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Heather Cochrane was woken at seven thirty by her alarm clock. She could make out the row of leotards she’d hung on the radiator, and the small window of her box room was steamed up, the blue light of dawn filtering through. She pulled back the covers and looked down at the ankle she’d sprained in her dance class the previous afternoon. It was resting on a pile of text books she’d placed at the bottom of the mattress.
She gingerly pulled her leg towards her, and peeled off the tight support sock, wincing at the pain. There was a dark bruise across the ankle bone.
‘Shit,’ she said, lying back on her pillow. She would have to see the doctor, or if she couldn’t get an appointment at the surgery, she would have to get to A & E. She heard the sound of her housemates laughing downstairs, accompanied by the radio, and the water ran through the pipes behind her head in the bathroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed she practised putting her weight on the sprain, but even the smallest amount caused a shooting pain. It looked like her weekend job was out of the question too.
She reached for her phone on the bedside table and waited whilst it switched on. She saw she had a voicemail, and pressed to listen. It was strange and muffled, with what sounded like the roar of an engine in the background.
‘Heather, it’s Beth…’ came her friend’s voice. ‘This man. He took me. When I was waiting for Robert… He took me from the street. Dark hair, short and fat, piggy eyes… I’m in his—’ There was a creak and the sound of traffic got louder. ‘I’m in the back of his—’ There was interference, and then just the noise of the engine.
Heather sat on the edge of the bed for another two minutes, listening to the ambient sounds; traffic, a horn honking, but nothing more from her friend. She took the phone from her ear and saw on the screen that the missed call was at 8.51 p.m the day before. She put it back to her ear as the message finally clicked off, and a recorded voice asked if she wanted to ‘press 1’ to return the call.
She did, but got a recorded message saying that Beth’s number was unavailable.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Just before nine a.m., Erika and Peterson were on the way to West End Central in Peterson’s car. They’d stayed at Erika’s flat in Forest Hill. Peterson was driving, and she lay back against the headrest, her eyes half closed. The snow had now all but melted, but it was cold and grey with a light drizzle.
‘You didn’t sleep?’ he asked, looking over at her.
‘Not much. Did you?’
‘I got a few hours, but you were tossing and turning.’
‘You should have said. I’d have moved to the sofa.’ A sign for a McDonald’s loomed ahead, and Erika checked her watch. ‘Can you stop at the drive-in? I need grease and coffee.’
‘That sounds good,’ he said, indicating and pulling in. They joined a queue of five cars, and then a van pulled in behind them. They’d placed their order and were inching toward the drive-thru window, when Erika’s phone rang. She scrabbled in her bag for it and saw it was Moss.
‘Boss, where are you?’ she said.