“Why not?”
“It’s like I said, earlier,” Denise replied. “The man we’re looking for is better than both of them. Maybe he’s too smart. I don’t know if we’ll ever catch him.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be caught but he wants to be acknowledged for his work?”
“Yes!” Denise exclaimed. “I think that’s it, exactly.”
There was another pause before she continued, in a whisper.
“I don’t know if I should tell you this, Paddy. I don’t even understand it myself, but … I wish I could meet him. Just once. I wish I could meet the man who could beat us all.”
Jack was so captivated that he missed the sound of his mobile phone the first few times.
He checked the time again. Ryan and Phillips would be on their way by now. Everything was going to plan, he assured himself.
Gregson stepped out into the light rain. Yellow light from the streetlamps cast shadows along the handsome avenue. The car door clicked shut behind him and he felt suddenly alone; no longer Arthur Gregson but a poor, hollowed-out shell of a man he might once have been.
His feet felt heavy as he stalked his prey. He was no natural hunter but a predator who preferred to find his meat ready-packed on the shelves.
The black Fiat came into view and he was careful to remain in the shadows, tracing the path of the walls, which delineated where one house’s front garden ended and another began.
He watched Jack for a several moments and found that he couldn’t bring himself to take another step. He thought of the consequences of betrayal, of what had happened to Mike and Jennifer Ingles, up on the island. Panicked, he reached for the knife in his pocket and the edge of the blade grazed his palm, drawing blood.
Arthur sucked in a breath and tried to muster up some strength. It was a dispiriting thought, to realise that he was still the coward he had always been; time, money and a decent wardrobe hadn’t changed that. His pulse pounded and his hand trembled against the hunk of metal. Rain washed over his ageing face, stripping it of pretence, soothing the sweat on his brow so that he could think clearly again.
He looked up, up, up into the sky. With child-like wonder, he watched the raindrops falling from above and traced the clouds plastering the night sky, moving and transforming before his eyes. He tried to read a message in their swirling folds, but could find none.
The clock was ticking.
Ryan made the turn along Eskdale Terrace and performed a hasty parallel park with a few jerky turns in the road. The surrounding area was manned by uniformed support and the side roads cordoned off. Residents had been contacted and told to remain inside their homes until further notice. There had been some loud mouthing, some grumbles, but the mention of ‘serial killing’ in the same sentence as ‘Jesmond’ had been sufficient to quell their complaints.
Now the large houses were shuttered up for the evening, their lights blazing as if to ward off unwanted guests.
The road where they parked ran perpendicular to Donovan’s house and to where Lowerson had positioned himself, thereby allowing them to intercept a fleeing suspect from the front or the side. The back road was manned by an unmarked police vehicle occupied by the same two handpicked DCs who had watched over Anna and a couple of other constables for good measure.
Trusted men and women, every one.
Ryan fired up a mobile radio unit rather than the car radio and fiddled with the dials to find the right frequency.
“Lowerson? Come in.”
Nothing.
“Lowerson? Come in.”
Hastily, he tried the man’s mobile number, which rang out.
Ryan and Phillips exchanged a look and, without further ado, sprung out of the car.
“You take Lowerson, I’ll get over to the house,” Ryan instructed, on the run. Rain fell steadily, but the air was mild rather than cold. They passed the tall, silent walls of a well-known private school, which sang with the chirping voices of teenage girls during the weekdays but was now silent while they were at home, no doubt discussing the latest sensational gossip to come from the boys’ school, which was conveniently located on the opposite side of the road.
“Bugger that,” Phillips puffed. “I’m for Denise.”
Ryan nodded his understanding. He would have expected nothing less.
“Don’t enter until I tell you, Frank. We need him to attack or confess, otherwise we’ve got nothing.”
Phillips’ lips flattened at the thought but he didn’t argue.
Turning into Donovan’s street, their steps slowed, so as not to make a commotion along the quiet pavement. Scanning the road, they spotted the black Fiat and Ryan gave Phillips a supportive slap on the shoulder before jogging across to it with a light-footed, swift-legged stride.