LAST RITES

‘And?’ asked Laura, coming close.

I clicked on the link in the email, just to make sure, and then I stood up and grinned.

‘She's accepted the request,’ I replied, pointing at the screen. ‘Now that makes an interesting angle.’

Laura leaned forward, curious.

‘She looks happy,’ said Laura, looking at the profile picture.

I clicked on Sarah's pictures, and there was a succession of family photos and ones of Sarah at play: at a party, a bottle of beer raised for the camera; on a fun run, her arm around some friends, their faces flushed. It was fun-loving young woman stuff, the story of a life she used to have that would never be the same again. She didn't update her page very often; perhaps she had joined on a whim – there were few friends in her profile. I noticed that she listed her status as single.

‘This means one thing,’ said Laura, ‘that she must be near a computer. I wonder if we can get the Facebook people to tell us where she is posting from.’

I printed off the page and clicked the events section, where people listed their diary.

‘Shit!’ I exclaimed.

Laura tapped me on the arm, pointing at Bobby. I held up my hand in apology and then tapped at the screen. From Laura's gasp, I realised that she had read it too.

In the events section of Sarah's Facebook profile, for 31st October, were the words, ‘ I die.’

I gave a slow whistle. ‘That's four days away,’ I said.

Laura looked grim-faced. ‘It looks like I'm going to have to go to the murder squad again.’

Chapter Seventeen (#ulink_cbdd00fc-cd50-5a49-a72d-a1b88e43f071)

Morning already. Sarah guessed it from the way it seemed a little warmer, although not much. She reckoned it had been eight days now, but it was hard to mark time when days and nights seemed almost the same: the constant spotlights, the relentless, steady noise of thumping heartbeats.

Sarah had shivered through the night so that every minute crawled by, her arms wrapped around her chest, no bed, no bedding, no clothes. She had paced around the room to generate heat, twelve paces in an oval pattern before she was back where she started, so she did twelve more, and then twelve more after that, the dirt getting stuck between her toes. She rolled in the mud on the floor, cold at first, but it was like an extra layer of skin once it set hard onto her body.

Maybe the mud had saved her. The early hours were torture, but she knew time was the only cure, that soon the air would become warmer, just. She waited for the sounds of movement.

But as she got warmer, Luke came back into her thoughts. Had they really killed him, or was that all part of the game? Maybe he was still alive and in a room just a few feet away? If she could get to him, maybe they could work together.

She paced faster, but the view never changed. Just a stone wall, and then another after that, broken only by her shadow cast by the spotlights, shifting as she walked faster, more heat, more sound, her feet moving in time with the pulsing coming from the speakers.

She had taken to chanting. As she paced, and then as she jumped on the spot, Sarah would say, ‘Keep strong, keep strong’, like saying it would make it come true.

But it was easier to be strong when she was on her own. There was no one to hurt her, just her own thoughts and dark despair.

Just then, the speakers went silent. Sarah heard someone outside the room. She froze, felt her stomach lurch. What was coming now?

Her strength disappeared when she heard the lock turn in the door.

Laura looked down at the arrest handover package in front of her. It was an A3 piece of paper, folded over, holding a print-out of the incident log and custody record, the former telling her how the job had been called in, the latter telling her what had happened to the prisoner since his arrival.

Pete buzzed around her desk, trying to see what she had.

‘A scrapper,’ she said, her voice struggling to hide her contempt.

‘Todd Whitcroft?’ he asked.

She checked the name on the front sheet. ‘Yeah, that's him. Do you know him?’

Pete raised his eyebrows. ‘Blackley's premier-league scrapper. Feeds his kids by stripping the town's roofs of their lead and cashing it in at the scrap yard. He's moved on to cables now, because he thinks they're less traceable.’

‘Maybe he's got scared of heights,’ Laura said as she skim-read the front-sheet. ‘It looks like they caught him with a van full of them.’

Pete sighed. ‘Oh great.’

‘What's wrong?’ she asked.

‘Todd Whitcroft never admits anything. He will say he had permission, or else he will say nothing at all.’

Laura sensed the day stretching ahead, and she was overtaken by a sense of gloom.

‘So we have to catalogue it all,’ she said, her voice weary, ‘just so that we can prove where it came from.’

‘That's about it,’ he said, as he hopped off the desk and headed for the door. ‘No time like the present.’

Laura got to her feet wearily, and then followed Pete out of the room. As they walked along the corridor, Pete bouncing small talk off the walls, Laura heard conversation coming out of the Incident Room further along. Her cheeks turned red as she remembered the humiliation from the day before, but she couldn't help glancing in as she went past. It looked like most were working the phones, chasing down old leads just to check if they had missed something. Only one person looked up, the cop in the polo shirt with the crew cut from the day before. He was still casually dressed, much different to the suits around Carson, and he smiled a greeting to Laura as he noticed her, a nod of reassurance.

Pete pressed the security button and they both went into the cobbled yard at the back of the station. Laura groaned as she saw the dirty cables spilling out of the back of a battered Transit van.

Pete passed her the clipboard. ‘You make notes, and I'll get in the van and shout out what we have.’

Laura was about to object that she wasn't his secretary, but then she looked at her hands, clean and scrubbed, and then at her suit. Maybe there was a time for chivalry.

‘Have you thought some more?’ the masked man asked Sarah as he walked into the room. He was still again, his arms by his sides.

‘About what?’ She covered herself as best she could, arms over her breasts, her thighs clamped together.

‘About killing me,’ he answered.

Sarah shook her head in exasperation. ‘I don't know who you think I am, and I don't know what you want from me.’

He nodded at her. Sarah thought she saw the shape of a ponytail sticking out of the cloth, bobbing up and down in time with his head. ‘I know what you are,’ he said. ‘But you have to work it out too.’

Sarah turned away and faced the wall.

‘Do you think you are the only one here with compassion?’ he asked.

Sarah took a few deep breaths before she answered. ‘It feels that way,’ she said quietly.

‘You'd be wrong at that,’ he replied. ‘Morals suit everyone differently. But what of the things you really want? Not the fantasies people tell you you should have, but your real fantasies, the ones you don't tell anyone about, the ones that come to you in the night? They're your real morals. You should embrace them.’

‘And what do you want them to be?’ Sarah asked, her voice rising. ‘Murder, like you, or worse? Torture? Rape? Is that what you want me to tell you I think about? Or maybe me being raped, how I like to be hurt?’