Panic (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 1) Page 4

  Carl shook his head, eyes squeezed shut, as though trying to shake off a bad dream.

  The voice nagged at the corners of Michael's mind again. The scene was still wrong. It didn't make sense. He turned, and stared again at Ralf's inert form.

  "So Ralf stuck him," Carl said, his expression sour. "Self defence. Too good for the bastard. Too quick."

  "No, I don't think so," Michael said softly. He was looking at Ralf's chubby hands. "Look here. Ralf's hands are clean. No blood. Not even a cut. If you're gripping a piece of that plate hard enough to stab someone, you have to cut yourself at least a little right? You have to get the other guy's blood on your hands don't you?"

  Carl looked at him, mystified. "I don't understand," he said.

  Michael stared at him, eyes glittering. "Someone else was here, mate. The question is: where are they now?"

  Chapter 3

  The coffee in the little red thermos was stale, but Michael chugged it down anyway, keen to wash the taste of bile from the back of his throat. He glanced at Carl, who was eyeing up the remaining doughnut, probably for the same reason, but obviously thought better of it.

  The older man rubbed absent-mindedly at his stomach, his expression pained.

  "Ever come across anything like this before Mike?"

  Carl was a good two decades older than Michael, but the younger man had actually spent a handful of years serving on the Force in Cardiff. On matters relating to actual police work, he deferred to the younger man's experience.

  Michael shook his head, and tipped the dregs of the coffee down his throat.

  They were leaning up against the car, facing the café warily, like a gazelle keeping one eye on a distant dozing lion. Carl had asked Glenda to put through a call for assistance, but, as with most things in South Wales, it would take time to arrive. So they waited. Outside.

  "No, nothing like this, not even close," Michael said. "A few violent-ish crimes I suppose, mostly domestic stuff. But nothing like you'd get in the movies. No bodies ripped apart. No serial killers putting on a show."

  He looked away from the café, gazing into the trees, his vision clouded.

  "Mostly it was just the same things you get here. Drunks. Theft. Just on a bigger scale. Violence? Mostly down to kids getting hold of knives really. Any time that cropped up it was...sad, really. Kind of pathetic. Not like this at all.

  "I don't know what you'd call this."

  Carl nodded morosely.

  Michael thought for a second. There had been the one time, of course, The time he didn't like to think about. The time that popped back into his mind like an uninvited guest occasionally. He focused his gaze on the gravel at his feet. Pushed the memory back into the gloom.

  They fell silent for several seconds, until Carl could bear it no more. The air felt heavy, claustrophobic. Today, the morning fog didn't appear to be going anywhere, and the thick grey morning was constricting his throat, making him feel like he was about to choke. Got to do something, he thought. Anything is better than standing here thinking.

  He stood, and made his way to the boot, popping it open with a click. Inside, buried under macintoshes and flashlights, he found a roll of police tape. It had been sitting there unused for years.

  He grabbed it, walked to the Cafe sign, and began to tie off one end. There was a tree opposite he could use to barricade the entrance.

  Michael smiled thinly, and gestured at the empty road.

  "Worried about the crowds getting in there mate?"

  Carl shook his head.

  "No, it's just....keeping busy you know? Standing around waiting...feels like I'm going to lose my mind here."

  He kept his eyes focused intently on his work, tying off the tape securely, and began to stretch it out across the doorway to the café.

  After watching for a moment, Michael went to help.

  *

  The mist coiled around the crooked cobbled streets of St. Davids, settling at ground level, spreading across the city like a stain.

  On the coastal road, it wreathed the work of the two police officers, silent and grim-faced, as they set about cordoning off the horrors residing in Ralf's Cafe.

  On Broad Street, it filled the small, perfectly manicured garden of the Roberts house, hiding from view the small terrier leashed to a drainpipe and muting his snarling rage at his sudden captivity.

  All across the town, as the good people of the town emerged from their warm cocoons, blinking blearily and hunching against the cold, the mist roiled, pushed this way and that by the wind, but refusing to dissipate. To the people, a foggy morning morning was nothing unusual, though a few remarked on how thick the fog seemed that day, and drivers grimaced as they crawled along, barely able to see beyond their bonnet.

  At 9.17am Rachel Roberts shuddered as she stepped off the toy-like two-carriage train onto the tiny strip of concrete that served as the railway station for St. Davids.

  A few years in London had softened her up, clearly. She'd forgotten about the morning fog and the damn wind that whistled through the streets almost incessantly, making a mockery of all but the heaviest of coats.

  Rachel released her grip on the handle of her suitcase (trolley-style, thank god, given the weight of the thing) and fished around her pockets for her cigarettes and a lighter. Lighting up, she inhaled deeply, and allowed the hit of the nicotine to calm her down. Four hours on crowded trains with no chance to smoke had left her frazzled.

  For a few moments she savoured the smoke, banishing the freezing cold to the back of her mind. This may very well be her last chance to have a cigarette for two days: Her mother had no idea that Rachel had become addicted to what she called the 'foul weed' during her years at university and, for both their sakes, Rachel intended to keep it that way. As a result, trips home to visit the folks quickly became fraught affairs, as withdrawal made Rachel snappy and edgy. She'd often considered the various ways she might be able to slip away for a crafty smoke, but in the end had never tried.

  Her mother had eyes like a CCTV camera, and in St. Davids people talked. Even if there were some plausible excuse for Rachel to disappear for ten minutes, she knew in her heart that someone would see her, and the information would find its way back to Mum. Information always did.

  She dropped the cigarette stub and crushed the life out of it under the heel of her boot, casting a glance around the pitiful excuse for a station. After a couple of years spent being carried along on a tide of people in cavernous hubs like Waterloo and Euston, the homely little platform seemed prehistoric. It symbolised the town perfectly.

  Like many of the young people growing up in the area, she had come to view St. Davids as an enemy, oppressing her and stifling her dreams and ambitions.

  Beyond hanging out with friends on street corners and in parks, trying to get of hold of alcohol and failing because everyone in the damn place knew exactly who she was as well as her age, there had been little here to relieve the boredom of her teenage years.

  Rachel had left home at twenty one, as soon as her stint at university had finished, convinced that a life of excitement and riches awaited her in London. Instead her degree had secured her only a job as personal assistant to a lawyer with wandering hands and a wage that would have been more than comfortable in South Wales, but which barely kept the heating on in the England's capital.

  Though the proud set of her jaw as she walked along the platform suggested otherwise, she was returning home at twenty five with more than a hint of tail between her legs.

  A small bridge took her from the platform up and over the tracks toward the car park on the other side. Rachel started up it, surprised and grateful to find that what had once been a set of steps was now a ramp, allowing her to wheel rather than carry the heavy case. Signs of progress she supposed, or maybe it was just the case that even a town as forgotten and remote had not escaped the talons of health and safety regulations.

  When she reached other side of the bridge and stepped into the little car park,
Rachel pulled up in surprise and disappointment. It was empty.

  On the infrequent occasions that she had returned home over the past four years her father had always been there to greet her, perched on the bonnet of the car, ready to sweep her off her feet and into a bear hug that threatened to crack ribs.

  Each time it happened, she'd struggled free, embarrassed by the public display of affection, but secretly anticipation of that hug had made the long journey seem shorter, and his absence this time stung like a slap.

  He'd taken her at her word, she supposed glumly, suddenly regretting all the times she had told him she was a grown woman now, perfectly capable of making her own way home. She remembered how the enormous grin on his face had faded with the words and felt her heart break a little.

  Rachel felt suddenly unnerved that her parents might finally have adjusted to the absence of their little girl, and for the first time felt uncertainty about how her father would react to the news that her temper had once again landed her in trouble, this time at the cost of her job.

  She was mentally prepared for the reaction of her mother to the news that Rachel hoped to move home for a while, ready for the scolding and disappointed looks. But Dad could always be relied on to fight her corner, and she was secure in the knowledge that he would look out for his little girl.

  Alone in the foggy, deserted car park, that knowledge suddenly did not seem at all secure.

  Reaching into her jeans pocket, Rachel pulled out the tiny smartphone that had become her main link to the bustling world of the internet, intending to ring her father to ask for a lift. Jason, her younger brother, would have been an option, but she knew that he was driving down from Birmingham, and would not arrive until later that evening. Time to swallow the pride and ask daddy to pick her up.

  No signal.

  Rachel rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation. Her mother had promised her that technology had finally reached St. Davids, that it was possible to get a mobile phone signal anywhere in the area now, but clearly nothing had changed. Landing on the platform at St. Davids station was like landing in the 1970s.

  There was nothing else for it. She'd have to walk.

  Come on Rachel, she thought, it's only a couple of miles. Get on with it, you're a grown woman now, remember?

  She pulled up the collar of the fashionable (but definitely not practical as it turned out) Vivienne Westwood coat that was her prized possession, grimaced as the biting wind tore straight through the flimsy fabric, and trudged toward the centre of town.

  In her wake, the fog rode swirling gusts of wind and writhed around the empty street like a live thing.

  *

  It was taking too long.

  Michael frowned and glanced at his watch, not for the first time. It had been at least thirty minutes since Carl had spoken to Glenda. There had been no further communication.

  Carl had insisted on using up half the roll of tape, and the entrance to Ralf's Cafe now looked like some vast spider had woven a complicated, untidy web across the trees that straddled the gravel driveway. They had worked in silence, each unwilling to discuss the horrors of the café, unable to think of anything appropriate to fill the resulting vacuum.

  "Something's wrong."

  It was Carl that finally broke the silence. His voice sounded strained, taut.

  Michael looked at him inquisitively. He was aiming to convey casual, but he knew from Carl's expression he was failing.

  "Don't give me that look, Mike. You know it as well as I do. Maybe better, given how many times I've seen you looking at your watch. Why the hell haven't we had a response? It's been, like, forty five minutes. What the fuck?"

  Michael glanced at his watch again.

  "Thirty five."

  Carl snorted.

  "Okay, thirty five. Nothing about that strikes you as odd? We didn't report a stolen bike here. Fucking hell, we reported that the ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer is walking around South Wales chopping off heads and ripping out throats with his fucking teeth. Anything about that not sound urgent?"

  "Maybe they're busy."

  Another snort.

  Michael stared at the yards of police tape. It was overkill, yet somehow appropriate. It mirrored the chaos inside the café. It was also messy, unprofessional. It spoke volumes about their preparedness to deal with the type of crime that now confronted them. If, for some reason, they had to deal with this alone for any length of time, Michael did not fancy that he and Carl would come out of the affair with perfect records. Too many chances to make mistakes. Too little expertise.

  Carl, despite his natural tendency toward pessimism, was right. Unless riots had broken out in Haverfordwest – a town only marginally less sleepy than St. Davids itself – Michael could think of no reason why his phone hadn't been ringing immediately. They had stumbled onto the kind of crime that makes national news. The police always responded to that kind of crime hastily. It was, after all, the sort of thing that made careers.

  So why was nothing happening?

  The logical conclusion dawned on him almost immediately: Glenda. Of course. Glenda was for the most part good at her job, but certainly she had been known to let her attention wander. Obviously, she had not grasped the seriousness of their situation, and either hadn't made the call, or had somehow botched it.

  Michael felt relief wash through him. It had felt like things were slipping away from him, and moving beyond his comprehension. The sudden realisation that the reason he and Carl had been left hanging must be nothing less mundane than Glenda gossiping instead of doing her job was like finding a tether to reality. It was frustrating, but also deeply familiar.

  He cursed himself for not having the number of the station in Haverfordwest stored on his phone, then let out a chuckle.

  Carl arched an eyebrow.

  "I gotta worry about you losing your marbles now Mike?"

  Michael grinned, shaking his head.

  "Damn place has got us spooked is all, mate. Nothing more mysterious going on here than a woman who should have called one number instead calling probably a dozen others to let half the town know that something big is going down at Ralf's café. The only mystery here is that we haven't had a stream of gawpers heading out this way yet."

  Carl looked confused for a moment, then brightened.

  "You think? I mean, I was pretty definite, and she said she'd get right on it."

  "What else could it be Carl? You said it yourself: this is straight off crimewatch. Hell this is straight out of Silence of the bloody Lambs or something. What possible reason would they have not to come here, or at least call us?"

  Carl nodded slowly, and blew out a long breath that seemed to have been held in for a very long time.

  "You got the number for Haverfordwest on your phone?" Michael asked. "Probably better to call 'em direct than have Glenda try to explain this."

  Carl shook his head.

  "Nope. I can barely work the thing well enough to have my wife and kids' numbers on there."

  "Directory enquiries it is then. I'm damn sure not calling 999. I don't think they'd ever stop laughing."

  Michael fished in his pocket and brought out the small silver phone that he carried everywhere, but rarely used. It was a good five years old. He tried a few months back, on a trip to Cardiff, to look into getting one of the smartphones that were everywhere now, but had in the end shied away from the idea. Just too confusing.

  He flipped open the screen and began to hit the buttons, then stopped with a frown.

  No signal.

  The cold, gnawing sensation in his gut returned.

  St. Davids was remote, but there was nowhere in the UK so remote that it didn't get mobile phone reception. Not any more.

  "Uh, you got signal on your phone mate?" He asked Carl. "Mine's playing up."

  Carl pulled out his phone, a distant ancestor even of Michael's, and stared at the screen, eyes narrowing.

  "Got a little 'X' where the signal thing usually is." He looked at
Michael. "That's odd right, both of us not having signal? We're not even on the same network are we? Does that matter?"

  Michael grimaced. The tension in his stomach mounted, and he felt acidic burning rising up his throat. Stress. He knew the signs well.

  "It's probably nothing," he said, though his tone was not as reassuring as he'd hoped. "Just means we'll have to go through Glenda, that's all. Let’s hope she remembers how to use the radio."

  He turned back toward the car, only about thirty feet away yet almost obscured by the gathering fog.

  Before he could take a step toward it, a noise stopped him dead. A noise that froze his muscles and turned his blood to ice.

  Somewhere, somewhere very close, a man was screaming.

  *

  It was 10am by the time Rachel reached her parents’ house, the exertions of the walk and heaving the suitcase through the streets leaving an uncomfortable sheen of sweat under her coat that only made her colder as the freezing morning air hit it.

  She had only seen a couple of people on the way, shuffling through the streets, huddled in heavy coats that looked warm and made her envious. Odd that the town was so quiet – ordinarily you could rely on bumping into small groups of people nattering on street corners, curious as to who was out and about that day – but the cold and the fog had proven uninviting to all but the hardiest souls.

  She was grateful for that. The worst part of having to walk home was the thought that she would encounter familiar faces, most of whom would no doubt greet her with a big plastic smile and probing questions about just why she had returned. She had been spared that, at least, though she knew the escape was only temporary. The questions would come.

  If anything the fog was getting heavier as morning meandered toward midday. Standing at the gate to her parent's driveway, Rachel couldn't remember ever seeing it so thick. From where she stood, the house was a barely discernible mass, a suggestion of a presence. Something to do with global warming, she supposed. The news had been full of odd weather phenomena over the past year, and one way or another the explanation was always the same: we are driving too much and recycling too little.