Nightshade

34

Inspector Hopkins yanked at the door. It was locked. He stepped back and considered giving it a kick, but he could see immediately that it was strong enough to take a lot of punishment. He looked around and saw a garden fork and a spade hanging from hooks on the wall. He grabbed the spade and headed for the garage door. ‘Come on, lad,’ he said. ‘Grab that fork and follow me.’

He ducked under the door and hurried around to the back of the house. The superintendent had said to stand by until the Armed Response Vehicle arrived, but the scream had changed all that. It was definitely a young girl and the sound had chilled his blood. It was a scream of a child in fear of her life.

He hurtled down the path to the back of the house. The kitchen door looked as solid as the one in the garage, but the window overlooking the rear garden was one large sheet of glass. Hopkins swung the spade back and brought it crashing through the window, turning his face to avoid any flying glass. Fisher joined him, and together they used their garden tools to hack away the remaining shards of glass.

Hopkins threw his spade through the window and crawled after it. He rolled over the windowsill, then wriggled across the sink and twisted so that he dropped feet first onto the kitchen floor. His shoes crunched on broken glass as he bent down to pick up the spade. Blood smeared across the handle and he realised that he’d cut his left hand. As he straightened up he saw Fisher struggling to crawl through the window. He leaned towards him, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him through before running out of the kitchen.

There was a woman in the hallway, mid-twenties in a grubby sweatshirt and Adidas tracksuit bottoms. ‘Where’s the girl?’ shouted Hopkins.

The woman was in shock, her eyes were wide and her mouth open. She had an acne rash across her forehead and a tan that looked as if it had come from a bottle.

‘The girl?’ shouted Hopkins again, raising the spade with both hands.

The woman pointed up the stairs. ‘Bathroom,’ she said.

Hopkins walloped her left leg with the spade, just below the knee. As the leg buckled he pushed her face down on the floor, just as Fisher came running out of the kitchen. ‘Keep her down, and call the Super, fill him in,’ said Hopkins.

As he ran up the stairs, Fisher planted his foot in the middle of the sobbing woman’s back and fumbled for his phone.

Hopkins took the stairs two at a time, the blade of the shovel scraping against the wall. He reached the landing and looked around. There was a door open to his left and he hurried towards it, raising the spade.

There was a man leaning over the bath. Hopkins saw a mop of greasy brown hair, a Chelsea football shirt and combat trousers. ‘Police!’ he shouted. ‘Turn around.’

Hopkins stepped into the bathroom and saw what the man was doing. ‘You bastard!’ he screamed. The man had his hands around the throat of a girl, submerging her in the water.

Hopkins brought the spade crashing down on the back of the man’s head. It made a dull thudding sound and the man slumped forward. Hopkins dropped the spade, shoved the man to the side and grabbed the girl under her arms. He hauled her out of the water and hugged her to his chest, then carried her out of the bathroom. He laid her on the carpet and scraped her wet hair away from her face. She wasn’t breathing and he didn’t waste time feeling for a pulse. It had been years since he had been on any sort of first aid course but he remembered enough to check that her airway was clear before tilting her head back and putting his lips over hers to blow air into her lungs. The second his mouth touched hers he knew that he was wasting his time.