Louise Voss & Mark Edwards 3-Book Thriller Collection: Catch Your Death, All Fall Down, Killing Cupid

When Kate was there.

He’d known since he was a young teenager that he was different to other boys. Everyone else – the whole fucking world – drivelled on about love and joy and happiness. He didn’t get it. Every song he heard, every film he saw, the conversations he overheard – it was all love and romance and hearts and flowers. He watched the boys in his class make fools of themselves chasing after girls. It was pathetic. He didn’t give a shit about girls. The nearest he got to feeling anything like happiness was when he was causing pain. Making his mother cry, beating his sister’s cat’s head in with a rock, fighting other boys and making them cry. That was joy.

Ironically, the more distant and disinterested he was, the more the girls liked him. They were all after him, to the disgust of the other boys. The prettiest, most popular girls pursued him, widened their eyes when they talked to him, licked their lips, asked him if he wanted to hang out with them. One girl even wrote him a poem, for fuck’s sake, which made him physically sick. But the girls offered him their bodies too, and he liked that. He liked fucking. He liked to make girls cry while he fucked them. After a while word got around that he wasn’t just a bad lad – he was really bad. They stayed away from him after that, apart from the really messed up girls, the ones who wanted danger, the girls with problems at home, glue habits and scars on their arms. He felt nothing for them except a vague animal lust, often followed by disgust. That was it. And that was the pattern of his early life.

Then Kate turned up at the CRU. Sampson’s colleague Geoffrey had picked her up and mentioned to Sampson that there was a really pretty girl in room 4C. The next day, they were working in the garden when Geoffrey nudged Sampson. ‘There’s that lassie I told you about.’ Sampson had looked up, disinterested.

It was like being kicked in the balls. He guessed he must have looked stupid in that moment, a slack-jawed moron, because Geoffrey laughed and said, ‘You seem quite taken with her. I told you she was a looker.’

Sampson couldn’t speak. He returned to his digging beside Geoffrey. Later, after the fire, Gaunt had been worried that Geoffrey knew too much so Sampson had disposed of the doddering old twat, burying him in the flowerbeds he loved so much.

He didn’t know what it was about Kate that had this effect on him, that made him feel more at peace yet more violent than ever before, the desire to hug and the need to throttle churning around inside him. She wasn’t the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, she didn’t have the best body, she didn’t move in a particularly alluring way. Put her in a room with a bunch of models and she’d stand out because, well, she didn’t look like a model. But she had an extraordinary effect on him.

Tormented, he’d watched her for a fortnight and then she’d gone, just like any volunteer, disappearing once their two weeks was up. He berated himself for not doing something, making an attempt to get closer to her, to overcome his paralysis in the face of the power she had over him.

And then she’d come back. Wonderful, terrible. And he realised why: she was with that doctor, Wilson, that wimpy little shit. How the fuck was she attracted to a gutless turd like him? Okay, so he was clever and handsome. He was nice. ‘Nice’ made Sampson’s teeth hurt. ‘Nice’ needed to be eradicated from the face of the planet.

Sampson soon became aware that Kate was up to something. So he watched her more closely, and kept an eye on Wilson too. His job had started to bore him but now he felt renewed interest.

It all climaxed in a night of flames and smoke, violence and burning flesh. He was there when the firefighters brought Kate and the other girls out. It was madness, utter chaos, the volunteers fleeing their rooms, police and firemen arriving from Salisbury, local residents appearing to ooh and aah at the spectacle. At the same moment he saw Kate and her room-mate being brought out, his boss appeared at his side. Instructions were quickly given. To Sampson’s immense disappointment, others were to deal with Kate. He was told to deal with her room-mate, however he wished.

Sampson found Sarah sitting on the grass, her head down, her nightdress, which was up around her knees, stained black by smoke. He said her name and she looked up at him. Her eyes were watering, her face, beneath the smudges of ash, was paper-white. She looked like she was at death’s door. He felt himself grow aroused.

‘I’ve been asked to help you,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’

He held out his hand and she took it. He pulled her to her feet and she stumbled. He caught her, putting his arm around her. Through the thin cotton of her nightie her skin was hot. A few feet away, Kate lay on the grass, unconscious. He looked at her ruefully, then escorted Sarah away.

She kept her head down as they walked, coughing and wheezing as he led her away from the burning building towards the trees. A gate in the perimeter fence led to a copse, just a stone’s throw from the building but concealed from view. Patients were allowed to go for walks beyond the grounds as long as they didn’t come into contact with anyone else.

She looked up, blearily. ‘Where are we going? I thought you were taking me to an ambulance.’

He didn’t reply, just pulled her along. They passed through the gate and into the copse.

She began to struggle. ‘I don’t understand . . . Let go of me.’

He gripped her arm harder, and pinched the skin above her hip.

‘Ow. Let go.’ She coughed as she protested, and as she doubled over he pushed her to the ground and dropped to his knees beside her, glad that he had been immunised.

Sarah tried to cry out but her lungs were too weakened by the smoke and the disease that had taken root in her body. Sampson pushed her onto her back and pinned her down. It was easy. She was weak and he was strong. She thrashed her head from side to side until he slapped her face and showed her his teeth.

‘Please . . .’

He cocked his head, examining her eyes. The fear fascinated him. It was pointless.

‘You’re going to die anyway,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s no point fighting it.’

She started to cry. How predictable. But her weakness, her sickness, her proximity to death, it excited him. He needed to be quick though. Pinning her with his forearm he unbuckled his trousers, pushed them down and pulled up her nightdress. He spat on his hand and moistened his cock. He was even more glad he’d been vaccinated.

She stopped struggling, just carried on crying.

As he approached his orgasm he held her throat in his hand and squeezed. Her neck was slender, his hand powerful. It didn’t take long. As she died, at the moment he came, he looked into her eyes and saw the horror there.

It was the strongest orgasm he’d ever had.

He needed to hurry. Picking up her lifeless body he strode back through the gate and found himself at the back of the building, where flames still licked at the windows, black smoke vomiting into the night air. The firefighters were round the other side, sending jets of water arcing into the building, fighting a battle that would take them minutes more to win. Sarah had got out of the Unit once. It was unfair really. But as his dad always said, life’s not fucking fair.

One of the windows at the back had blown out, and Sampson was able to step through, carrying Sarah in a fireman’s lift. It was like Hell inside the building and the heat almost knocked him off his feet. They were inside a bedroom. He fought his way into the corridor and realised he was next to the room that Kate and Sarah shared. He staggered inside, dropped Sarah’s body to the floor, slammed the door, locked it behind him with his master key and retraced his footsteps, fighting the urge to breathe in before he climbed back out through the window.

The moment he got outside, he collapsed.

Now, standing in the hotel car park, Sampson stepped on his cigarette and savoured the lingering memory of that night.

How much sweeter it would have been if he could have taken Kate into that wood.

He couldn’t believe she was back. Now he was going to get his chance, at last. The chance to make her his. The chance to look into her eyes and see what she saw at the moment of death. They would be naked, slick with sweat, his mouth on hers, her tongue clamped between his teeth, his legs between her thighs. And the most delicious idea of all: as he fucked her he would pick up a knife and slash her throat – and then slit his own. Wouldn’t that be the perfect way to go, at the zenith of experience, the apex of feeling. He would press his neck against hers so the blood from their jugulars flowed and mingled together, and the last thing he’d see would be her, dying too.

The fantasy excited and terrified him in equal measure. What the hell was wrong with him, imagining himself dying in the arms of some woman? It was obscene, that’s what it was. Obscene and confusing. He despised the way she made him feel. He had to put an end to it, to remove this random element, this satellite that stirred the calm, dark surface of his life. He refocused on his fantasy, but this time his own throat stayed intact. Only Kate’s jugular gushed. Only she died in pain.

He had to light another cigarette to calm himself, and as he struck the match he realised how stupid he’d been. How could he not have recognised the man with Kate on the CCTV film? He’d been so busy staring at Kate – but it was him. The doctor. Stephen Wilson. Except – how could it be? There was absolutely no way that could be Stephen Wilson.

What the fuck was going on?

He had to find them. And he thought he had an idea where they might be heading, where he would go if he were them. Back to where it all began. He got into his car and headed for Salisbury.

Chapter 21 (#ulink_270ecd6c-2b5f-547d-94a1-88f63dfc46be)

The St Magdalena Nursing Home made Vernon Maddox feel nauseous. Old people gave him the heebie-jeebies and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. He was frightened of being like them. It only seemed like yesterday when he was young and virile with a thick thatch of auburn hair on his head and chest. Now the hair on his head was falling out and his chest hair was grey. At least Shirl still liked him. He felt a wave of sentiment, then returned to concentrating on the matter in hand. Finding his wife and son.

He’d only met Kate’s Aunt Lil once before – back before she was loony tunes – and it wasn’t a visit he’d ever planned to repeat. If anyone had told him that one day he’d be visiting the old bat in an old folks’ home he would have told them to stop smoking crack, but here he was, clutching a droopy bunch of flowers.

He’d only just recovered from the flight. Flying scared him even more than old people, especially since 9/11. This was the first time he’d been on a plane since that terrible day, even though Kate had pestered him ever since to visit the old country. She’d argued that you shouldn’t give in to terrorists; that you had to live your life as normally as possible. Yeah, right . . . He remembered watching footage from London after the bombings, with Londoners getting back on the subway – or the tube, whatever it was called – and those ridiculous red buses the very day after the bombs went off. Brave? It was crazy, as far as he was concerned.

It hadn’t been difficult at all to find the nursing home where Aunt Lil was waiting for her flight out of here. After discovering his wife’s monstrous betrayal, Vernon had rushed home in a cab and scoured the house. Who would Kate visit in England? She only had two living relatives, Lil, and her mousey sister, Miranda. Although Kate had taken her address book with her she hadn’t deleted the contacts on her computer, and hacking into it couldn’t have been easier to guess – her password was Jack’s name and birthdate. There, under L – and this pissed him off, the way she filed people by their first name instead of their surname – was the name and address of Aunt Lil’s home. He moved on to M and found Miranda’s address. Easy.

On his way back to the airport he had considered calling the police, getting Interpol on the case, or whoever dealt with such crimes. But how long would it take to persuade the authorities that Jack had been abducted, especially as it was by his own mother? It would be far too slow. He wanted his son back now. And another thing – he wanted to do it himself. He wanted to see Kate’s face when he caught up with her. That would be well worth the trauma of the flight and having to spend a few nights apart from Shirl.

The nursing home was in London, so that was where he headed first, after booking into a hotel near Paddington, the first one he saw after getting off the Heathrow Express. He vaguely remembered Kate telling him some tale about how Lil had moved from Bath (pronounced with an ah) to London when she was in her late sixties to be near her old friends. Lil had actually grown up in London.

It was a grand Victorian detached building with ivy scaling the walls. Vernon’s feet crunched on gravel as he walked up to the front door and pressed the buzzer. A woman in a crisp white uniform and a butt to die for beckoned him in, and he explained who he was and who he’d come to see, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the smell that drifted through the building, breaking through the wall of air freshener.

‘Hi.’ He turned on his most charming smile, the one that he liked to practise on female undergraduates. He explained who he was and who he’d come to see. ‘My wife visited the other day,’ he guessed. ‘Kate Maddox. She would have had my son, Jack, with her.’

The nurse beamed. ‘Ah, yes, the American boy. What a little angel. Such good manners.’

‘Yes, he’s been well disciplined.’

The nurse raised an eyebrow, then said, ‘Shall I show you up to Miss Johnson’s room?’