Phobia Read online

  Honor reached a platform in the belfry, and immediately detected the scent of rain and cold air. A tension formed in her gut, twisting it with latent fear as she stepped out onto the belfry platform. The baffles were closed on all sides but one, where they had been removed entirely, and she realised that the floodlighting on that side of the church had also been switched off. To her horror, she could see three scaffolding planks lashed one on top of the other, stretching out into the absolute darkness outside, slick with rain. Honor froze where she was.

  ‘Don’t stop, Honor,’ O’Rourke murmured slowly, accusingly. ‘Your destination is at the end of the plank.’

  Honor’s guts turned to slime within her as she stared at the stone arch and the wet plank vanishing into the night.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ she demanded.

  The response that came down the line was not O’Rourke’s voice, but Samir’s, and it was a hellish scream of unimaginable agony that screeched into her ear and echoed around the belfry like panicked bats seeking to escape. The horrific scream faded away, and O’Rourke’s voice reached her again.

  ‘I won’t tell you again, Honor. If you want Samir to live, walk the plank.’

  Honor crept toward the open archway, the stone aperture about as tall as she was and maybe eighteen inches wide. The planks were lashed firmly in place, and she could see that something was lashed to the other end, and that there was also a small bag on the end of the planks. The wind gusted, driving rain across her field of view, and then she saw the body dangling beneath the end of the plank.

  Natalie Delray was hanging by her wrists a couple of feet below the end of the planks, her hair tangled and roiling like snakes in the wind, her mouth gagged as she swung back and forth. Her eyes were wide with terror, her face stained with tears, and her limp body told Honor that she was under the influence of GHB, unable to move.

  Honor felt her phone vibrate in her hand and looked at the screen. A message had appeared there, a call waiting from Danny Green. Honor’s thumb hovered over the answer button, desperate for his presence and assistance, but knowing that if she answered the call, O’Rourke would know about it and Samir would…

  ‘Now, Honor!’

  O’Rourke screamed the command into Honor’s ear and she took her thumb off the screen as she stepped forward onto the plank, ducked her head slightly to fit through the archway. She couldn’t help the whimper of terror that escaped from her lips as she saw the sheer two–hundred–foot drop to the ground open out below her, and her knees buckled as the strength was robbed from them.

  Honor crouched down onto her knees, gripped the plank with both hands as she slid her mobile phone into her pocket, careful to leave it on speaker. There was still the hope that the police would think to track its location and find her, although she felt pretty sure that they would have no reason to do so unless Emily Wilson came through and identified O’Rourke.

  Her arms felt feeble, her guts churning as she crept out onto the planks, just like the ones they had found at St Magnus the Martyr church. She guessed that the three were strong enough to bear her weight and that of Natalie dangling from the other end, but her fear overcame her and she froze, her feet still inside the archway.

  An agonised scream of misery emanated from her pocket as whatever hell O’Rourke was putting Samir through continued. Honor felt tears spring to her eyes as she began shuffling along the planks, one agonising inch at a time, the wind buffeting her and the rain pelting her skin and making the surface of the planks ever more slippery. The church car park was two hundred feet below, parked cars like little toys, the tops of the trees swaying in the wind. Vertigo turned Honor’s senses on their head, her legs pulsing with terror, as though every puff of wind threatened to hurl her into the abyss. Samir’s tortured scream faded away as Honor inched her way forward. Her knees were tucked in and touching each other, her elbows dragging on the surface of the plank, her knuckles white as she prayed that the wind would not be strong enough to blow her off. She kept her head down, her nose almost touching the plank, desperate not to see the horrendous drop below.

  ‘Almost there, Honor,’ O’Rourke intoned, ‘just a little further.’

  Honor crept another few inches, the bag almost within her reach, but her heart was fluttering dangerously in her chest and her limbs seemed unwilling to respond to her brain’s commands. The planks began to bow as she moved further out, moving up and down in the wind and she screeched in terror, froze where she was. O’Rourke’s voice reached her from her jacket pocket.

  ‘Good, Honor, very good. Now, check the bag. In there, you will find a knife.’

  Honor’s fingers crept along the surface of the plank, and she pulled the bag toward her with one finger, terrified that any further motion would send her plunging to her doom. It was small, just a leather satchel, and despite her shivering she managed to open it by pulling it onto its side and reaching inside, moving nothing but her fingers. Her hand touched something hard and sharp, the blade. She eased it out.

  ‘Good, that’s the knife.’

  How the hell can he see me? Honor looked down, her guts convulsing as she saw the vertiginous drop yawning below, but then she saw Natalie’s terrified face looking back up at her. Around Natalie’s forehead was strapped a band to which was attached a small camera, which stared back at her from Natalie’s forehead like a third, cruel black eye.

  O’Rourke’s voice reached her once again.

  ‘Cut her bonds, Honor,’ he said slowly, relishing every word. ‘Send her to her death and gain your revenge, or Samir’s life will end.’

  25

  ‘We’ve got another one!’

  Danny shut off his phone as a uniformed officer rushed into the Incident Room and picked up the remote to the wall–mounted television, switching it to BBC News in time to catch a fresh report coming in. The screen filled with a spinning, gyrating view of a plunging two–hundred–foot drop to a darkened car park, the sound of a woman crying, rain spilling from the night sky.

  ‘… the latest shocking footage being broadcast across the Internet of a woman dangling from great height somewhere above London, which may possibly be connected to recent broadcasts of victims being trapped in situations that reflect their greatest phobias…’

  Danny stared in disbelief at the footage, which was hard to follow as it seemed that the person involved was actually wearing the camera. The point of view swung this way and that, a blur of imagery, the lens flecked with spots of rain water.

  ‘We need to know where they are,’ DCI Mitchell boomed, one arm pointing like a shotgun at the screen.

  ‘She won’t stay still,’ DS Hansen complained, squinting as he tried to pick out details of the surrounding area.

  Danny took a pace forward, thinking fast. ‘Rewind it, and start playing it forward at one–quarter speed.’

  The officer complied instantly, snapping the footage back by ten seconds and then advancing it slowly forwards. The footage was still blurred, but now they could see the car park more clearly, trees, some kind of grounds, streetlights on nearby roads with rows of houses.

  ‘Could be anywhere,’ DI Harper said as she examined the footage. ‘Got to be something like a church spire, like the one at St Magnus, or maybe Southwark cathedral, we know he’s used them before.’

  Danny nodded in agreement and glanced at his computer monitor, which was feeding him footage from the body cam of a City Police team rushing into Whitechapel. ‘Forced entry team is almost at O’Rourke’s, they’ll be inside within moments, but he’s not going to be there.’

  The BBC News footage swung around, the image blurring as whoever was wearing the camera pivoted about and looked up into the night sky. They were treated to a shot of the victim’s wrists, lashed to the end of three scaffolding planks placed on top of one another, and on the end of the planks a face, hair matted with rain, features twisted with a volatile mixture of grief and determination, a large knife in one hand.

  The offi
cer with the remote froze the image on instinct.

  Danny stared wide–eyed at the face, captured in one terrible moment of time on live television for the entire world to see.

  ‘Honor.’

  ‘Cut her loose, Honor.’

  O’Rourke’s disembodied voice spoke to Honor from her mobile phone, willing her on. Honor crouched on the end of the wavering planks, the wind and rain lashing at her, threatening to hurl her to her death far below. Natalie Delray’s bleating face stared back up at her from the end of the rope, as able to hear O’Rourke as Honor was. ‘She ruined your life, Honor,’ O’Rourke intoned, ‘she’s brought you nothing but

  pain and misery. She took everything from you, your life and your husband.’

  Honor held the knife in her right hand, the blade just inches from the rope now separating Natalie Delray from certain death.

  ‘She took your baby from you, Honor.’

  Honor felt her heart fracture as she saw in her mind’s eye the ultrasound image of the child that had once grown within her; a tiny, innocent life, untarnished by the callous hand of fate until the moment when Honor had realised that her entire life was a lie, that the one person most devoted to protecting her and supporting her had been deceiving her for months, perhaps for their entire relationship.

  ‘She took your baby from you, Honor.’

  O’Rourke’s voice was soft, soothing. Honor could barely feel the wind and the rain as she crouched on her knees and elbows, stared down into Natalie Delray’s eyes. This woman had taken her life apart, shattered her every dream, killed her first child, this woman who now dangled by a thread, her entire future in Honor’s hands. In O’Rourke’s hands. Honor should have phoned Danny, she should have called somebody, done something, but she hadn’t, and now she was stuck here and facing an impossible choice. It was on her. This was all on her.

  ‘She’s not worth the gift of life, Honor, not like Samir here. Save him, take her life and free him. Nobody would blame you, it’s an impossible decision, you’re under duress. Cut down one bad person to save one good person, Honor, you know that there’s no other way.’

  Honor stared down at Natalie for a moment longer, and then she heard the sirens screaming across the city, carried by the gusting winds. From one corner of her eye she detected flickering blues racing through the streets, rushing to her aid, to end all of this. O’Rourke’s voice drifted through her consciousness like a cruel phantom taunting her from the edge of death itself.

  ‘Time’s almost up, Honor. Who’s it going to be? Whose life do you wish to spare?

  Your colleague, Samir? Or the life of the woman who ruined your life?’

  Another horrific shriek of agony from Samir soared from the mobile phone. Honor gritted her teeth.

  ‘You took everything from me!’

  Her cry emerged from somewhere deep within, raw and wild, and went howling into the savage night. Natalie shook her head, tears mixing with rainwater on her face, blood smeared on her wrists from the grinding, rough rope.

  ‘You killed my baby!’

  Honor could no longer really see properly, the rain blurring her vision, her crippling fear momentarily tamed by rage. Natalie again shook her head with shuddering, uncoordinated jerks, the GHB in her system wearing off slowly. Honor heard her begging through her gag for surcease, pleading for some chance to explain.

  ‘The police are almost there, Honor,’ O’Rourke murmured. ‘Do it, now, or Samir will be lost forever.’

  Honor gripped the knife tighter in her hand, pressed the blade against the rope, and suddenly she knew that she had no choice. There was nothing that she could do, no other way out of this, and Samir did not deserve to die. Samir does not deserve to die. Her baby had not deserved to die. Somebody has to pay. There has to be justice.

  Honor pressed the knife against the rope and with a shriek of helplessness she hacked the blade back and forth.

  O’Rourke stood in front of a small laptop in an abandoned warehouse in Spitalfields and watched, enraptured, as Honor hacked at the rope. Excitement pulsed through his loins as he glanced at Samir’s mobile phone beside the laptop. Then he looked to his right, where he held a knife that was thrust through the bridge of Samir’s foot. The police detective’s naked body was sheened in sweat despite the cold, bound by ankles and wrists, lying on the damp floor of the warehouse and writhing in pain.

  O’Rourke watched the rope fray as Honor hacked it apart, heard Natalie’s muted cries of terror. Natalie looked down to the car park two hundred feet below her, screaming and crying in desperation.

  Then the rope parted as Natalie screamed and she tumbled into freefall.

  O’Rourke gasped as he saw the ground rush up, the footage blurring left and right as Natalie plunged to her death in a frenzy of streetlights, rain and wind. The unforgiving tarmac of the car park flashed toward her at terrific speed and then there was a deep thud and a sickening crunch. The footage snapped to a motionless, side–on view of the car park, specks of rain falling silently onto the lens.

  O’Rourke stared at the screen in mortified delight as a maniacal chuckle blurted from his lips.

  ‘She did it,’ he said as he turned to Samir. ‘She actually did that for you.’

  For a brief moment O’Rourke saw an unbidden image of his mother in his mind’s eye, her tenderness, her kindness despite all that she had endured, and for the first time he felt a moment of shame for what he had put Honor McVey through. He turned to where Samir writhed still, and then he grabbed the detective’s foot and yanked the blade from it.

  Samir cried out as blood spilled from the wound.

  ‘You’re a lucky man, detective,’ O’Rourke murmured. ‘I know what it means to have somebody who cares for you, as Honor cares for you.’

  Samir gritted his teeth against the pain, but said nothing. O’Rourke looked down at his victim.

  ‘A shame, then, that it’s all for nothing. You’re number five, Samir.’

  O’Rourke switched off the laptop computer, then took the mobile phone and switched it off too. He pulled out the SIM card, then dropped the phone onto the concrete at his feet and drove one heavy boot repeatedly down upon it, shattering the phone. He then picked up the mangled remains and tucked them into his pocket.

  The he turned and looked down at Samir.

  Danny stared in utter astonishment as Natalie Delray plunged two–hundred–feet and smashed into the ground. A rush of whispers and gasps of horror fluttered like phantoms around the Incident Room, the woman’s death broadcast to countless millions of people.

  ‘Jesus,’ DS Hansen uttered, ‘she just committed murder in front of the whole world.

  I knew she wasn’t up to the job!’

  DCI Mitchell called across the room to Danny. ‘They’ve entered O’Rourke’s property, one dead body confirmed at the premises but it’s not Samir. They’re searching now, but O’Rourke’s not there either.’

  Danny tried to assimilate what he was hearing, but none of it matched up. Honor had said that O’Rourke was changing his MO, keeping them on their toes, distracting them to avoid capture. He was so deep in thought that he barely noticed his mobile phone buzzing in his pocket. He reached down, lifted it to his ear and answered without taking his eyes off the television screen.

  ‘Green, detective constable.’

  ‘We just had a tip–off, O’Rourke was seen entering a disused building, Princelet Street, Spitalfields.’

  Green shouted the information, the phone still against his ear. ‘Princelet Street, Spitalfields, O’Rourke’s in a disused building!’

  DI Harper and DCI Mitchell were in motion in an instant, calling in units to hit both ends of the street and cut off any escape for O’Rourke as Green spoke into the phone.

  ‘Do we know who the tip–off came from?’

  ‘That’s the thing, it came from Detective Sergeant Honor McVey. How would she know where O’Rourke was?’

  Danny thought for a moment, then he shut the line off.
r />   ‘I’m heading down there. I think I might know where O’Rourke will go.’

  DI Harper didn’t reply, she simply waved her hand vigorously in the direction of the door. Danny dashed out of the IR and ran down the corridor outside, betting the farm that he could get one step ahead of O’Rourke before he could vanish into history.

  The police sirens screeched into Whitechapel, their blues flashing as multiple vehicles pulled into the car park of St George’s in the East church. Honor could see them from where she crouched on the end of the plank, numbed by the cold wind and rain, frozen with terror. The dark abyss beneath her was real and tangible, but the darkness within had vanished. Her rage, the terrible, corrosive anger, had withered and fled into the wild night, leaving her only with her crippling fear of heights and a voice that spoke softly to her.

  ‘You can do this, Honor. Just ease backward, one shuffle at a time. The plank’s not going anywhere, you are. Just keep backing up, nice and slow.’

  Honor’s limbs wouldn’t respond, shivering uncontrollably, fear writhing through her body like something alive.

  ‘One inch at a time, Honor. You’ll be safely back inside within a minute. You can do this.’

  Honor managed to get one leg to respond and shuffled backwards along the plank, staring down at the woodgrain beneath her to avoid having to look anywhere else. Paranoia suggested she might not back up in a straight line and plunge off the side, and she froze again.

  ‘You’re doing great, keep going. You’ve got this.’

  Honor shuffled again, moving backwards one tiny movement at a time, and slowly she edged back inside the archway and into the interior of the belfry, her fingers aching as she clutched the boards. The rain stopped falling on her as she crept back into the darkness, could hear drops of water dripping and echoing around the belfry, could smell the cool stone and old timbers, and then she staggered off the planks and collapsed onto her knees, her entire body shaking like a leaf as she heard police storming up the steps toward her.