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He reaches out, and before she can stop him, his hand grabs her hair, ripping clumps out by the roots.
Then fingers are at her chest. They tear through icy flesh, nails scratching against bone, against ribs, hungry for her heart.
As she cries out, his mouth opens in a silent scream, blood pouring out from within.
CHAPTER 1 (#u167d5789-a49b-5627-acd4-aeba5da7aa87)
Detective Chief Inspector Claire Winters bolted upright, eyes snapping open.
She was shrouded in darkness and it took her several seconds to realise where she was as her eyes adjusted to her surroundings.
Her head was spinning but soon the shadows stopped moving and became solid shapes, pieces of furniture she soon began to recognise in her living room.
Her hands grabbed at her chest, which was slick with sweat despite the chill of the room. A sigh of relief shuddered through her body when she realised her skin, flesh and bone were still intact.
She pushed back the stray strands of blonde hair from her face, and then held her head in her hands. Night terrors had become part of her, almost feeling as physical as something she wore, but it was no badge of honour.
That one had been one of the worst she’d had in the last year. Usually they followed the same familiar pattern, but with subtle differences.
She sucked in a deep breath, held it until her chest ached.
Despite knowing who it was she ran from by the end of each frantic nightmare, this was the first time she’d actually seen Him – or at least some twisted version of Him.
Her hands slid down her face, wiping back tears that had begun to fall. Ice-blue coloured eyes glassed over as she eventually let the tears fall freely, staining the pale flesh of her cheeks.
A loud bang outside made her jump, bolting off the sofa, stumbling over the blanket that had fallen at her feet. A series of smaller hissing sounds then followed, erupting in a series of loud bangs, and bright lights flashed behind the curtains that she had drawn earlier.
She hugged her arms tightly around her torso and shivered. She wore a rough knit jumper, its coarseness scratching at her skin, with skinny jeans that were slack at the waist and had begun to bag at the knees. She’d lost a stone in weight in the last year, but she refused to buy new clothes.
She was startled by the cracking sound as sparks seemed to dance across the roof of her house, raining down in a night so cold it stole your breath away.
She pulled back the curtain of the nearest window and saw the bright coloured fragments scatter in the sky.
Fireworks had been let off from the house somewhere across the road, at the bottom of the drive.
She released the breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding. She caught her reflection in the cold glass. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, and what little lines she did have across her forehead had deepened.
She imagined she saw Him beside her, staring at their reflections. His eyes, seen moments before in the nightmare, still black pits.
Hollow.
That summed up how she felt.
She looked at Him, then squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Go away,’ she said. When she opened them again, she felt the fog in her mind begin to clear a little. ‘It’s just a nightmare,’ she said in the darkness.
After several moments passed she went back to the sofa and felt for her phone, her head feeling thick, disorientated. She unlocked the screen and checked the time.
18:36.
She had less than an hour before she was due to be at the annual firework display in Haverbridge. She contemplated not going, and pulled up the last text message she had sent, about to send her excuses.
She flicked on the light, and looked around the room, phone clutched in a sweaty palm. The house looked as it had done a few hours ago when she’d decided to just rest her eyes.
The night terrors took their toll on her. Rarely a week went past without being woken by them. Grabbing a short sleep here and there when she could had been her way of coping with it for many months now.
She knew it couldn’t go on like this, but no way would she ask for help.
This was something she had to overcome on her own… and she would, in her own time.
*
She headed up the stairs and put on clean clothes, dumping the sweat drenched ones in the laundry basket, before heading to the bathroom.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet.
Her skin had taken on a grey tinge of late and her frame appeared gaunt. Others had noticed, made comments. She lowered her eyes, casting a critical eye over her stomach when she lifted her jumper.
For someone who had once taken so much pride in her appearance, even she knew her standards had slipped a little.
She could hear her colleagues’ comments in her head, whispering their concerns when they thought she couldn’t hear them.
The self-pity crept in briefly, before it was pushed aside by the resilience she was known for. Soft, kind eyes became hard once again, a steely glare cast at her reflection in the mirror.
Fuck them, she thought.
She splashed cold water on her cheeks, determined she would leave the house and at least appear to be social.
This is not me, she told herself inwardly. I am in control.
Minutes later she was sitting in her car, engine running, heaters clearing the fog from the windows, tapping out a text.
You twisted my arm. On my way.
She pressed send before she could change her mind, put the phone in her pocket, and headed down the drive, mindful of the ice on the ground that twinkled in the brightness of the headlights.
She headed out of Hexton, and on towards Haverbridge, taking the scenic route, passing another sleepy village before the road cut through open fields.
She sucked in deep breaths when her mind started to clog with the familiar uneasiness of before. When she breathed, she could see the faintness of her breath expelled like puffs of smoke from between parched lips.
She turned the heating up a little more and tried to relax her body. Tight muscles soon began to relax into the seat. She felt the ache in her jaw and realised she’d been clenching her teeth together. She swallowed hard, focusing on the stillness of the country road, where frosty skeletal trees and bushes hugged it from both sides.
This year autumn appeared to have bypassed the UK entirely, and winter seemed to have taken the Hertfordshire town of Haverbridge, where she worked, into its relentless clutches much earlier than anticipated.
The large town had a population just short of 100,000 people and was situated some thirty miles from London. Haverbridge had grown over the years, becoming a commuters’ paradise for those who worked in the capital but didn’t want the bright lights of the colourful city in their backyard at home time. They wanted to say goodnight and really mean it.
Haverbridge was beautiful, yet ugly in so many ways – not dissimilar to other towns and cities up and down the UK – but Haverbridge had a different side to it. It was exceptionally beautiful in the darker months. What made it so striking, you couldn’t easily describe; it just was.
The summer sun had long disappeared and the threat of early snowfall was a very real one.
For Claire, it was bad news. It made her fall easily into an abyss of self-loathing and bitterness, something she was prone to. The cold haunted her like a restless spirit and the chill was not good for her bones.
She glanced at the clock on the dash. She’d be a little late, but she knew Stefan would understand. She took the road leading to the motorway, and as she travelled at a steady 60mph, she looked at the road ahead, bright lights and traffic rushing past, through eyes that didn’t quite feel like her own.
One day earlier
The man glanced around the car park and stifled a yawn as he looked down at his watch. He snuggled down further in the driver’s seat; his thick padded coat was warm and inviting. He was sleepy and wished he could close his eyes.
The body in the boot – it’s now or never.
His car was the only one there, almost hidden in the darkness. The cold air hit his face when he emerged from the car. It caught him unawares and he gasped instinctively, clasping his hands tightly together, rubbing them for warmth.
When he stood in front of the boot, his hand hovered over it as if he had second thoughts about what he was about to do, as if the final act were any worse than what came before it.
The light inside the boot cast a dull light on what was inside. He looked down at the black bin liners, wrapped crudely around the majority of the body. Only the bottom half of the legs were left uncovered.
The once soft skin now looked waxy. He thought back to when those legs had kicked out at him, before he’d secured them together.
Shame, really.
This one had had such spirit.
His hands reached in and grabbed cold limbs. He began to haul the body carefully out onto the frozen ground.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_fe4bce57-f397-516e-99ae-59b57b4c8703)
5
November
There was a huge whizz followed by a violent crack in the night sky as the firework exploded high above their heads.
Claire jumped, instinctively closing the gap between herself and Detective Inspector Stefan Fletcher. He glanced down at her, his tall thin frame buried in an oversized padded coat against the cold. He saw her tense, and ease herself a step or two away from his personal space.
He smiled inwardly.
Aloof and sometimes proud, with walls built so high that they could rarely be penetrated. These were Claire’s bad points, but she wore the traits with pride, giving off the impression that nothing could faze her.
Stefan knew different though.
After a high-profile case the previous year, Claire had put Haverbridge back on the map. Not always for the right reasons, but in Claire’s case, any publicity had turned out to be fairly good publicity. She’d become one of Haverbridge CID’s best, and had ridden out the storm, forging some close allies amongst her team, and Stefan was one of those people.
Despite Claire’s misgivings about herself, she was extremely good at her job, and respected. No one would’ve been justified in calling her incompetent, or an easy target.
But Stefan had seen the signs, seen the cracks appear since that investigation. It had exhausted her, changed her forever in some ways.
The murdered priest case – how could anyone come back from that completely unscathed?
More fireworks whizzed skywards, drawing appreciation from the assembled mass around them. Stefan watched Claire from the corner of his eye. Whilst she looked to the heavens with everyone else, he saw the glassy look of her eyes. She was there in body but the mind was elsewhere.
‘The kids would’ve loved this,’ he said, his blue eyes scrutinising every twitch in her face when she heard him speak.
She glanced at him, gave a weak smile.
Stefan would normally take his kids to Haverbridge Lake’s annual firework display, but his ex had changed her plans and he was expected to fall in line. He felt sad at not seeing his children but, surprisingly, he was very glad to have Claire’s company.
In the past, Claire had had a few detective sergeants as her subordinates. Most hadn’t lived up to her expectations but Stefan had been different. Having watched him come into his own, and making DI in recent years, she’d relished the chance to work alongside him permanently, where possible, as an equal, despite the difference in rank.
‘They wouldn’t have liked the cold, Fletch’ she said, at length. ‘The kids I mean.’
Stefan shook his head. ‘Kids are tougher than they look.’
He saw her bite her lip. Claire didn’t have children, or was ever likely to. Sometimes he felt like he was walking on eggshells in the last year. He didn’t know what might upset her, so topics of conversation sometimes felt stilted.
Claire had her vulnerabilities as much as the next person. She had closed the gap between them earlier, something she’d never admit to if he called her out on it.
He’d noticed her weight loss, although he’d never say so. Her face had become more chiseled, cheek bones sharp.
Those ice-blue eyes looked permanently sad.
Stefan pushed his hands deeper into his pockets, trying to draw the life back into them. The night air was bone-chilling and the breath of the eager crowd hung in the air like thick white smoke.
He breathed in deeply; the air was heavy with the smell of bonfire smoke and fast food. He followed the line of people surrounding the huge lake and caught sight of the fast food stands. His stomach growled.
‘Do you want anything to eat?’
Claire was rubbing her gloved hands together for warmth and her breath cast out in clouds around her face. She shook her head.
‘Mind if I?’
Claire either didn’t hear him or was too cold to answer. He shrugged and pushed his way through the crowd.
When he returned, hotdog in hand, Claire saw he looked troubled.
‘What’s wrong?’
Stefan gave half a shrug as he bit into his hotdog. ‘I wanted to talk about DS Crest.’
Claire waved her hand, dismissing the very mention of his name. ‘Not while I’m enjoying myself.’
‘He speaks highly of you too.’
‘Look, I really don’t need this right now.’ Her voice turned hard. ‘I couldn’t care less what that Armani-wearing-metrosexual-walking-cliché thinks of me.’ She turned to face him.
Detective Sergeant Elias Crest was a new addition to her team.
The last man Detective Superintendent Clifton Donahue had placed under Claire’s watchful eye had lasted barely six months. Claire had hoped DS Crest would be different, but they hadn’t exactly hit it off.
Elias had transferred from Merseyside after spending five years in Liverpool South’s CID team. There were official reasons given for the transfer, but the real reason wasn’t quite so clear cut.
