What Lies Beneath (Rutland crime series Book 1) Page 17

  The fact the light was on meant Smallwood was likely still at home. She could wait here — should wait here — and keep an eye on the house until backup arrived. But at the same time she felt the unavoidable urge to go inside.

  She wasn’t even on the case anymore. She didn’t have to wait for backup. She didn’t have to follow the procedure.

  But it wasn’t just about procedure. It was about the truth. It was about justice. Smallwood had brought her to her knees. The case had consumed her for two weeks — two weeks when her health, her marriage and her job were at their most fragile, and he’d almost finished her. There was no way in hell she was going to let some plod from Leicester with a helmet wade in and take the glory. She had to face Smallwood herself, look him in the eye and meet her adversary. After he’d come so close to defeating her, that was a moment she would relish.

  Caroline walked up the short driveway of number six, stopping on the doorstep for a moment to catch her breath, then she tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

  It was only thirty seconds later, once she was in Howard Smallwood’s kitchen, that she heard the cocking of a gun.

  57

  ‘Down on your knees. No sudden moves, alright?’ Smallwood said, his voice almost a whisper. He was trying to sound calm, but Caroline could tell he was shitting bricks. That wasn’t ideal — not when he had a gun in his hand.

  ‘What’s this all about, Howard? Why the gun?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t fit. The clues. The little remarks. You wanted us to find you, didn’t you?’

  ‘I wondered if you would. It doesn’t mean I wanted you to, though.’

  ‘So what was it? Was it the challenge? The thrill of the chase?’ Caroline knew that as long as she kept him talking, she’d be delaying things, giving the firearms officers more time to get to Oakham from Leicester. She didn’t want to die. Not here. Not now.

  ‘If you like.’

  No, no, keep talking. Keep talking.

  ‘Did you break into my house tonight?’

  ‘Why, did you think it might’ve been a particularly keen tourist information manager?’

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the clock on the front of Smallwood’s oven. She was acutely aware she had to fill a lot of time if she was going to stand a chance of getting out of here alive.

  ‘You used to live in the Hambletons, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s no secret. I’m amazed it took you as long as it did to find out.’

  ‘I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to have gone through that, at that age. Losing your home. Being moved from the place you knew and loved, all because someone else told you to.’

  ‘That cottage was my grandmother’s. She was born there. So was my mum. It was ours. No-one else’s.’

  ‘I know. Things… things that happen at that age stick with you.’

  ‘Don’t try to psychoanalyse me. You won’t manage it, trust me.’

  ‘I’m not. Honestly, I’m not. What I’m saying is you and I probably aren’t as different as you might think.’

  ‘Oh, so now you want to be my friend. Now you’re kneeling on my kitchen floor with a gun to your head.’

  Caroline glanced at the clock again. ‘It’s not about friends and enemies, Howard. It’s about shared experiences. I’ve… I’ve been there. Not exactly the same, but still a traumatic event at a young age. I… I had a brother.’ She felt a sudden surge of something inside her, a welling up of emotions she hadn’t addressed or spoken about for decades. ‘There was a… Something happened. Something that shouldn’t have happened. Something that could have been avoided. He died. And the worst thing is he didn’t need to. I… I’ve had to live with that all my life.’ The words tumbled out of her as the tears rolled silently down her cheeks. ‘I know you’re not going to believe me, but I’ve genuinely never told anyone this. Not for years. I don’t even know why I’m telling you, but here we are. I am. But that’s what happens, isn’t it? Things that should be buried, and which are buried for years, always bubble up to the surface. Nothing stays down. There’s only so long you can hide things and hope they’ll go away. Because they don’t, do they? And sooner or later something happens which means you’ve got no choice but to act on whatever it is you’ve repressed. And the feelings you should’ve dealt with years ago have to be dealt with in other ways. Is that why you did this now? Because of the tumour?’

  ‘We’re not here to talk about that. You know nothing.’

  ‘Trust me, I know far more than you think I do. I’ve got one too. On one of my ovaries. I’ve been having chemotherapy, but it hasn’t shrunk it enough. They’re talking about operating, but I don’t know. There’s so much going through my mind, I don’t know what to do or what’s going to happen.’

  Smallwood was silent for a moment before speaking. ‘At least you’ve got a choice.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she whispered. She could hear his breathing getting heavier with emotion.

  ‘Glioblastoma. The most aggressive form of brain cancer. I’m at stage four. Same as the percentage of people who survive it. And those are the ones who get treatment.’

  ‘Are they not treating you?’

  ‘There’s no point. Most people are dead within a year. You know, when a doctor tells you that, you get this sense that you’re going to gradually get worse, but never really know when the end will be. What they don’t tell you is that you can absolutely feel the end coming. It’s why animals go somewhere safe and alone to die. They know what’s happening. Their body tells them.’

  ‘Is that what you planned to do? You said you were going away tonight.’

  ‘We all have our safe place. The spot where we want to finally be laid to rest.’

  ‘Can I ask?’

  ‘What difference will it make? You’ll only try and stop me.’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to stop anything right now, Howard. You’re pointing a hunting rifle at the back of my head.’

  Caroline heard a gentle clatter as Smallwood put the gun on the kitchen table.

  ‘Go on, then. Arrest me. Deny a man his final resting place.’

  ‘Howard, even if I let you go you’d be stopped at the border.’

  ‘Border of what? I’m not leaving the country. I’m not even leaving the county.’

  Caroline closed her eyes and nodded. ‘Rutland Water.’

  ‘Nether Hambleton.’

  ‘You’re planning to drown yourself?’

  ‘Sleeping tablets. I’m going to row out to the right spot with ballast tied to me. Some lighter fluid. A pack of matches. And just as I’m drifting off, with my last bit of energy, I strike the match. I won’t feel a thing. I’ll be long gone. So will the boat. And I’ll be pulled down by the ballast. Back home.’

  There was something in the way he spoke that tugged at Caroline’s heartstrings. He sounded like a young boy. A lost boy. And in that moment, she had an overwhelming urge to step aside and let him go. After all, what was there to lose? He wasn’t going to get away with anything. Within a few hours he’d be dead and lying at the bottom of Rutland Water, exactly where his childhood home had once been. What good would it do anyone for him to die a few weeks or months later in a prison cell somewhere? If he was as gravely ill as he said, he probably wouldn’t even make it as far as the trial. But that feeling didn’t last long.

  Bubbling away underneath it was that anger at everything Howard Smallwood’s perverse little game had put her through over the past two weeks. Everything she’d lost or nearly lost. Everything that had been put at risk. She looked over towards him, watching him lost in his reverie. And before he could react, she launched herself at him.

  58

  He was stronger than she thought. Far stronger. She’d heard stories of people who’d found superhuman strength when faced with a battle they absolutely had to win. Deep, primal urges were real, and they were strong.

  She tried to put an arm around his neck and get him into a headloc
k, but she couldn’t reach quickly enough. Smallwood pushed back, catching her off balance and sending her backwards, her spine crashing into the edge of the kitchen work surface.

  She shouldn’t have thrown herself at him. She should have kept him calm, kept him quiet, kept him talking until backup arrived. There were always plenty of things she should have done but didn’t. It was the story of her life.

  Now the challenge was to keep him at bay, fend him off and restrain him until the firearms officers turned up. She had a feeling there’d be a whole new battle then, but that wouldn’t be her responsibility. Besides which, that was easier said than done.

  Smallwood charged at her, far too quickly for her to move out of the way, and she felt her back crush against the edge of the worktop again, sending bolts of pain down through her legs. She tried to stumble forward to throw him off balance, but her legs didn’t have the strength. They’d gone dead.

  She fell to her knees and grasped at Smallwood, trying to rugby tackle him to the ground, but he’d already shifted his weight on top of her. As he turned round to push her face-down on the floor, she slammed her right elbow backwards, catching him square in the chest.

  It gave her a couple of seconds of breathing space, but it wasn’t enough. In that instant, she remembered the rifle. She reached up to grab it, but saw Smallwood’s hand reach it first, before it disappeared out of sight.

  His knee and lower leg came down on her back, pinning her face-first on the ground as she felt the cold barrel of the rifle press against the back of her head.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to end like this. I promise,’ Smallwood said, before pulling the trigger.

  59

  The click was only gentle, but Caroline reacted as if a bomb had gone off. A moment or two later, though, she realised she could still hear the sound of her own breathing.

  A second click.

  Before her brain could come to the conclusion that the gun had failed to fire, she felt a sudden searing pain as Smallwood slammed the butt of the rifle into the back of her head, leaving her wailing and writhing in agony.

  The instinct to try and get to her feet hadn’t even reached her as Smallwood wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled backwards, tensing his muscles as his arm began to crush her windpipe.

  A sudden moment of clarity came to her. This was how it ended. This was how it had ended for Roger and Arthur Clifton, and it was how it would end for her too. The blow to the back of the head, then strangulation.

  In that moment, all she could think of was Mark and the boys, sitting around his mum’s dinner table, laughing and joking, oblivious to the fact she was about to become Howard Smallwood’s latest — final — victim.

  She’d never realised how much the human throat could collapse under pressure. There was no way of getting air into her lungs. No way of releasing Smallwood’s grip. She felt the blood throb in her head as it struggled to circulate, her lungs desperately gasping for air.

  As her vision started to speckle and blacken around the edges, she realised this was it. This was the end.

  60

  The air rushed into Caroline’s lungs as she wheezed and coughed. That sweet oxygen couldn’t come quickly enough, and her chest burned as her vision started to come back to her.

  She had no idea how long she’d been out, or what had happened between then and now, but Smallwood was no longer on top of her. His arm was no longer around her throat.

  She could hear sounds of a struggle, the noise of people shouting. The blood throbbed in her temples as it restored its usual journey through her veins.

  She rolled onto her back, still gasping for air, which couldn’t come quickly enough. She turned her head to the side and saw Dexter pinning Smallwood to the ground, his knee and lower leg on Smallwood’s back as he held his wrists behind him.

  ‘You okay?’ Dexter said

  Caroline nodded, her neck stiff and sore. She didn’t try to speak. Didn’t want to speak. In any case, there were no words she could possibly say. Her job had always shown her how fragile life could be and how quickly and easily it could be snuffed out. Those were facts she knew, but which she’d never experienced in quite that way. Not for many years, anyway.

  She looked at Smallwood and was disturbed to see his face carried no emotion. This was the face of a man resigned to his fate, a man who knew what was coming and still didn’t mind one bit. This was how life was always going to turn out for him. This was his fate.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Dexter said. ‘You’re safe. You’re going to be alright. We’ve got him. Just hold on. Not long now. We’ve got him.’

  Her head throbbed, but the cold tiles of Howard Smallwood’s kitchen floor provided some small relief. From here, her line of sight carried on out of the kitchen door, down the hallway and to the glazed front door. She heard the sound of sirens approaching; that familiar, welcome sound. She felt her eyelids getting heavier as the sound grew louder.

  Then came the blue lights, flashing and strobing, bouncing off the frosted glass of Howard Smallwood’s front door, lighting the house.

  Caroline closed her eyes and waited.

  61

  Caroline had never expected to spend her Monday morning in a hospital bed, but it would be fair to say the last couple of weeks hadn’t conformed to expectations in many ways.

  A thousand thoughts swirled around her head as she woke up. Where were Mark and the boys? What happened to Smallwood? Was Dexter okay? What about her job? She was certain it wouldn’t go down well once her superiors found out she’d gone to Smallwood’s house alone, even though she’d been taken off the case. But in that moment, she didn’t care. She was alive.

  ‘Has anyone ever told you you look ridiculous when you’re asleep?’

  She didn’t need to turn her head, because she recognised the voice immediately. She let out half-laugh, half-sigh. ‘Thanks, Dex.’

  ‘No, seriously. Your mouth sort of hangs open like a fish, but only a little bit. When you breath in and out your lips kinda click and pop. It’s weird.’

  ‘Spoken like a true failed doctor. Don’t tell me — you finally passed the exams so they let you treat me.’

  ‘You wish. I’m only here because I didn’t fancy taking the rap from Arnold. I’m not going anywhere near the office until I’ve got you in front of me as a human shield.’

  ‘What happened to Smallwood?’

  ‘He’s in the nick.’

  ‘Leicester?’

  ‘Yup. No skin off our nose. Saves us having to look at him again. It’s a bit of poetic justice, in a way. He wanted to end his days in Rutland. Now he’s stuck in a prison cell in Leicester. Can’t beat bad luck, can you?’

  ‘I’m sure Leicester’s lovely.’

  ‘Yeah, well you did take quite a knock to the head. Apparently he’s made a full confession. Nothing to lose, I guess. There’s a decent chance he won’t even make it to trial.’

  ‘Judging by the strength he showed last night, I think he’s got a fair bit left in the tank yet.’

  ‘Silent killer, apparently.’

  ‘Him or the brain tumour?’

  Dexter laughed. ‘At least it means there’s some closure. And in even better news, Patrick Walsh thinks you’re only the second-biggest dick in Rutland. Turns out Smallwood had got wind of his affair with Alice Clifton from watching the family’s movements and thought it’d be a fun little twist to his game if he implicated Walsh. I think he just wanted to fuck up the entire family.’

  ‘It’s not just the one family, though, is it? What he did spreads so much further than that.’

  ‘Regroup, rebuild and whatever the other R-word is.’

  ‘Listen, Dex, if I end up getting let go, I just want you to know I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done. Not just with Smallwood, but… you know.’

  ‘You won’t be going anywhere. Whatever goes down on paper, the fact is it was you who worked out it was Smallwood. If it wasn’t for you, he’d be lying at the bottom of Rutland Wat
er right now, having died an innocent man.’

  ‘Fingers crossed Arnold sees it like that.’

  ‘He’ll be alright.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to apologise for. I mean, maybe you could loosen the reins a little and listen a bit more to what other people have to say, but I think we can let you have at least an hour of glory first.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I feel properly glorious lying here.’

  ‘You don’t look it,’ said a voice from the doorway. It was Mark, with Josh and Archie standing beside him. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Never been better. Is anything actually wrong with me?’

  ‘Observations,’ Dexter said. ‘They’re probably looking for a heart.’

  ‘You’re on fine form this morning, Dex.’

  ‘Not enough coffee. On which note, I’ll leave you lot to it for a bit. Nice to see you again, Mark.’

  ‘You too, mate.’ Mark watched Dexter leave, then walked over to Caroline, leaned over and hugged her. ‘Come on, boys. Give your mum a hug.’

  She found it impossible to put into words how much she’d missed them. They’d only been gone a couple of days, but it felt so much longer. A lot had happened, and the fact she’d almost lost her life a few hours earlier hadn’t escaped her notice.

  ‘What happened? We didn’t get any info, except to say you’d been injured arresting someone and taken to hospital. They said it wasn’t serious and not to worry, but we jumped straight in the car first thing anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine. It was nothing,’ Caroline said. ‘Actually, we’ll talk about it later. Just a bit knackered now. But we’ll talk. I promise. And you two,’ she said, pulling her sons in close again, ‘will be pleased to know I’m going to take a bit of time off to spend with you.’

  She looked over the top of their heads and at Mark. For the first time in a long time, she could see warmth in his eyes.