SEVENTEEN
Just when Pete Mulgrave had believed tonight couldn’t get any weirder he had seen the little girl dancing in the rain outside.
He had spent the whole time since Williams and Munro had gone outside to ‘look around’ like two fugitives from a bad horror movie, pacing the floor and on occasion listening at the door. He had on a couple of occasions entertained the idea of peeking outside but then had come to his senses and dragged himself away.
The doctor was still in the next room with the witness so he had been left alone with his over active imagination. The storm outside had set his nerves well and truly on edge as he waited. He thought about giving Mooney a call on the radio just to hear a familiar if far off voice but he knew he needed to keep it clear just in case the coppers from the mainland called back. So all he could do was listen to the wind and rain battering the prefab like demons from hell, or at the very least from his imagination.
That was when he had gone over to the window and cupped his hands over his eyes to look out into the storm. And there she was dancing just on the very edge of the prefab’s flood lights outside. She was skipping and pirouetting arms out wide with her face turned up to the dark sky dressed for a winter’s walk complete with a bobble hat. It wasn’t hard to imagine she was laughing.
Movement to his left caught Pete’s eye and he looked to see two other figures appear at the edge of the wooded area they were just visible through the gloom as the lights barely reached that far. The child’s parents? No, as they moved away from the trees Pete could just about to make out they were both men. His rapid breathing was beginning to fog the glass. He cursed and wiped away the condensation with his hand and when he looked again he half expected the bizarre trio to be gone but they were still there. After a moment of watching the girl dance, one of the men beckoned her over. She stopped and waved as if just noticing them for the first time. The man beckoned again and the young girl half ran half skipped over to them and then the three vanished into the darkness of the woods.
The radio’s external speaker burst into life, voices tried to come through but they fazed in and out. Pete tore himself away from the window and was about to see if he could get better reception when a young girl’s laughter came through loud and clear for a moment. “Oh, come on,” Pete said his sanity slipping a little.
The front door burst open and he screamed in shock. Williams and Munro came inside with the wind and rain at their backs and forced the door back shut. Pete thanked the storm for sparing his blushes as they clearly hadn’t heard him. “Fuck me,” he uttered.
The radio’s speaker returned to spitting static and garbled voices. Williams shook the rain off himself. “Well I’ve seen it all now,” he said.
“You saw them?” Pete asked and almost clocked with emotion.
“Huh?” Williams replied then sat by the radio and began to delicately adjust the tuning.
Suzy Munro threw off her coat. “We just nearly ran off the edge of the fucking cliff!” She said shaking her head in disbelief. “There’s a woman of all things running around in the woods out there!”
“A woman?” Pete asked with a sinking feeling.
“Yeah,” Suzy replied. “We tried chasing her but we lost her near the cliff’s edge. Christ I hope she didn’t get swept off, the sea is getting mental. It’s crashing right up to the top of the cliffs. Jesus!”
“Weird shit,” Williams said concentrating on the radio. “Our radios went haywire as well, spewing out all types of garbage. Must be this damn storm. Weird, weird shit.”
Yeah, Pete thought there’s a lot of that going around tonight. He was suddenly hit with a massive wave of shock which knocked him down into a nearby chair. He looked at his hands which were shaking manically. Tears came out of nowhere.
Suzy saw this and moved swiftly over to him and knelt down. “Pete? Christ, what’s wrong?”
What’s right? He thought and with great effort told them what he had seen.
“Widow’s fucking Bay, the east coast’s number one out of season tourist trap!” Williams said once Pete had finished his surreal tale of the dancing child and her audience of two. He began playing with the radio’s tuner once more. “All manner of people running around despite a hurricane.”
“Yeah,” Pete said feeling better for having unburdened himself. “Come see the mutilated murder victim and scare the locals half to death.” The gallows humour made Suzy laugh out loud and the sound fair lit up the room.
“Hello, hello?” The voice came faintly through the radio’s speaker.
“Oh, thank Christ.” Williams adjusted the tuning ever so slightly, fearful of losing the connection again. “Hello?” Much clear now, it was the Chief Inspector. “Can you hear me there? Williams? Can anyone hear me?”
“Chief Inspector? Yes, we can hear you now. This is P.C Williams, over.”
“Thank Christ! Williams, we’ve been trying to get through to you for ages.”
“Yeah,” Williams said giving Suzy and Pete a look in turn. “We’ve been having some technical difficulties.”
“Right, now listen to me...” Pearce began but Williams cut him off.
“Sir, we’ve had a couple of...” His voice trailed off as he fought for the right word. “Incidences,” he said with a wince. “There are at least four people running around here.”
“Shit, have they tried to get in, or to the body?” Pearce asked.
Williams covered the mic for a moment and turned to the others. “Why would he think they would want to get in here?”
Suzy leant forwards and flicked on the radio’s hands free mic set up. “Sir, this is W.P.C Munro. With all due respect, what are we really dealing with here?”
There was a long pause and for a second it seemed the connection had been lost. But then Pearce’s voice came through again loud and clear. “We think, although we are not sure, that maybe the victim was killed in a vigilante attack. You see he may be a previous suspect in the killer’s investigation. And there is the possibility that perhaps he was killed by relatives of one or Christ all the victims. But the truth is we’re not sure.”
“Fuck me,” Pete uttered.
Williams nodded. “Okay, sir, so what’s next? You think they are going to come after the witness, maybe us?”
“Look, first thing’s first. We may be way off track here. What I need you to do is get me a clear, and I must stress very clear picture of the victim’s face.”
Williams hung his head. “Christ,” he whispered. Would this rain soaked nightmare never end?
“Get me that picture and keep everyone there together in the station until we can get to you. Is that clear?”
“Chrystal,” Williams said all thought of chain of command etiquette gone. He switched off the mic with a violent flick of the wrist.
“Well that’s easy for him to say,” Suzy said in dismay.
“Yeah,” Williams got stiffy to his feet and drew his baton. “Keep everyone here Suzy...” She made to protest as he knew she would but he threw up a hand to silence her. “Keep everyone here and safe, please.”
He looked at her and she reluctantly nodded.
“I’ll be five minutes,” he said.
“Bet you wished you had that gun now,” Pete reminded him with a sympathetic smile.
“Hell yeah,” he replied wearily. And he really did.
It seemed impossible, but the constant wind and rain seemed to fade away to nothing as P.C Ian Williams stood numbly in front of the boatshed not two minutes later.
The heavy front doors were standing wide open, half shattered and smoking in the night air. The acrid smell of burnt wood and plastic stung his sinuses as he slowly walked through the doors and into the boatshed itself. The tarpauling that covered the lifeboat was all melted down one side as if something incredibly hot had brushed down the side of it. The charred fiberglass body work just visible though the still bubbling plastic.
He walked like a man in a waking nightmare over to the work bench and wasn’t the least bit surprised to see the body was gone. All that remained was the smoldering material of the makeshift shroud it had been wrapped in.
And he knew this meant things were going to get much, much worse.