56

He stepped into a dark, narrow corridor at the end of which were two doors. One, he guessed, led into the carport, the other into the house. He moved towards the one that opened into the garage, gesturing for Lansing to take the other one. Peterson held back in case he had to come to the assistance of either one of them.

The door to the carport opened easily with one kick. He looked around the room, quickly moving his gun as if it were an extension of himself. He scanned every inch of the space in just a few seconds.

There was no-one. Fuck. Fuck again. How many times could this happen to him? But he had a feeling that the place was significant. He was on the trail of Ryan Gleason, the man who had been fucking him around.

What lay before him was a scene of chaos and disarray. Amidst the mass of distorted car parts, bottles of oil, tyres, hammers, spanners, he spotted a vice. As he walked towards it Lansing and Peterson entered the back of the room. The entire internal space of the house had been converted into a gigantic carport.

‘Who is this guy?’ whispered Peterson. ‘Some kind of mechanic?’

Harper ignored him. ‘What’s that smell? Anyone else smell that?’

He had smelt it many times before. It was the aroma that haunted his dreams. The stench of death.

‘I don’t have to remind you not to touch anything,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a feeling we’ll be needing forensics.’

He walked over towards the vice clamped to a table in the centre of the room. Around the table lay a number of tools, a pair of pliers and a serrated knife, its blade a sienna brown. Under the table, on the bare cement floor, was a stain, something as dark as oil. Quite recently something had pooled under here. Harper bent down and examined the sticky mass. It was blood. Old blood.

Cassie had lost a little blood during the course of her attack, mostly from surface wounds sustained to her fingers. Could it have come from her? It seemed certain that her description of the place where she had been held matched this godawful place. But there seemed to be too much blood here to make it hers. Far too much.

And that smell – where was that coming from? He stood up and walked around the room. In the left hand corner, the one nearest the street, was a single, iron-frame bed, covered with an old sheet and a couple of cheap blankets. On the bedside table was a pile of car magazines, an overflowing ashtray and a half-empty beer bottle. It wasn’t a salutary sight by any means, but the origin of the smell was not here. It was more – more towards the back of the space, nearer the side of the house that bordered the yard.

He moved slowly towards a bank of cupboards at the back of the house. Through a low window, fitted with frosted glass, he could see the feet of Curtis and the other cop stationed outside. He took out his cell and dialled Curtis.

‘Whoever was here has gone,’ he said. ‘Anything interesting at the back?’

‘No, just some junk and a few slashed tyres,’ she said.

‘There’s no point you coming in here. It would be stupid to contaminate the scene any more. But if you could call Reeves and get him over here, I’ve a feeling we’re going to need him.’

Josh stared at the cupboard, which once had been white; now, its surface was soiled by grime and what looked like old streaks of blood. The rank smell was emanating from behind its doors, he was sure. He reached out, his hand moving towards the handle. He watched his fingers tremble.

He dragged the sleeve of his sweater down to cover his right hand. He stretched his arm out, took hold of the knob and turned it. With each minute movement of the handle the smell seemed to intensify, almost as if the gesture was speeding up the process of putrefaction. As he pulled the door open he started to gag. He swallowed hard and tried to clamp his nostrils shut, a response he had tried to perfect over the years.

‘Get me a torch,’ he said, trying not to retch. ‘There’s something in here.’

Lansing moved quickly towards him, producing a torch from his pocket.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘God only knows, but whatever it is it sure -‘

The words died in his mouth. As the beam illuminated the deep cupboard space – most of which was filled with old clothes on hangers – it settled on a mass of blonde hair. There was something familiar about the colour. Gently, careful not to disturb any evidence, he eased the head backwards so he could see the face. He reared back in shock as the swollen head of Cynthia Ross looked up at him from the dark. Her eyes bulged out of reddened flesh and around her neck was a loop of blue rope, a necklace of death.

There was something wrong here. The stench was overwhelming, but this corpse was fresh; it looked like she had been dead less than twenty hours old.

He shone the torch deeper into the recess. There was something else there, something he couldn’t make out. He ran the beam of light over the vague outline. What was the shapeless mass on the floor. A pile of old clothes? The soiled contents of a laundry basket? So distorted was its shape that it took a while before Harper realised what it was.

‘Give me more light,’ he shouted, taking hold of another torch.

He shone the beam of light onto a body – a man or a woman he couldn’t say – in a ripe stage of decomposition. The jaw was stretched wide as if fixed in a final scream, and maggots spilled out of the dark space that had once been the mouth.

Harper had seen many corpses in the course of his career, but nothing like this. Although flesh, sagging and rotten, still clung to the bones of the face, in the space where the eyes should have been there was nothing but two black holes.

57

Kate ran out of the car as soon as she saw Josh stumble from the house. By the time she was at his side he was on his knees, vomiting. She stroked his hair as he retched, caressed the back of his neck as his body shook. Lansing was next out of the house, also obviously in shock.

‘What is it?’ asked Kate, looking at Lansing. ‘Did you find him? I didn’t hear any shots.’

‘No, he’s not there,’ said Lansing.

‘He’s gone,’ said Josh, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Fucking gone.’

‘And -?’

‘What did we find?’ said Josh, sardonically. ‘Cynthia Ross – strangled – and the rotting corpse in a cupboard with no eyes, that’s what we found.’