The Nightmare Place Read Online Free

to other people’s things, but teaching them a lesson as well. Dare to own a home and have possessions? Stupid enough to work hard and build a life? Well, look what we think of you. Imagine us laughing as we take the fruits of your efforts, trash what we don’t want, and spit on what’s left.
    I couldn’t stop thinking about the muffled laughter I’d heard. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been as angry as this in my whole life.
    ‘Prompt response?’ Chris said.
    ‘The uniforms? Oh, yes. Ten minutes, maybe. They stayed around for about half an hour, as well. One of them even went into the back garden with a torch. Which was useless, obviously, but nice of him.’
    ‘At least they’re taking it seriously.’
    ‘That’s true.’
    Being police probably helped in that regard, but it wasn’t just down to that. There’s a common public misconception that burglaries aren’t high on our list of concerns. It’s simply not true; they’re taken very seriously indeed, especially when the homeowner is present. It’s just difficult to get a result from them. There are usually no prints, and anything stolen tends to get sold on quickly. The result is that a significant proportion of burglaries are solved by being ticked off the list when an offender gets caught for one and owns up to a handful of others, so that his cooperation can be taken into account during sentencing. Everyone’s basically a winner.
    But that’s most burglaries – the ones where the offender just gets in and gets out again. This behaviour, though – the trashing – was closer to an engagement. There was a sense of escalation to it. A few incidents down the line, you could imagine that the individuals involved might take things further: venture upstairs; maybe even hurt people. So they needed catching before we ended up with something far more serious than theft on our hands.
    Especially in the current climate.
    ‘You came downstairs, didn’t you?’ Chris said.
    ‘Yes. Of course I did.’
    ‘Right.’
    And there he was again with the kicked-puppy face. We’d worked together for years, he knew full well how capable I was, and yet he still found it impossible not to engage his protective side. Often when it surfaced I did my best to hide how patronising I found it, but I didn’t have the patience for that today.
    ‘What did you expect me to do? I was very angry, Chris. There were people trashing my house and taking my fucking things.’
    ‘Yeah, but you should be careful.’
    ‘Fortunately, a floorboard keeps coming loose in the bedroom, so I have a hammer nearby.’
    ‘Even so.’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘You never know, do you? It could have been our creeper knocking around down here.’
    Our creeper. As a title, it hardly went far enough. But even though it was the force’s major case right now, a few officers had taken to calling him that, as though minimising him by name might make the details of the attacks somehow easier to deal with.
    ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ I said. ‘We’d have him now.’
    ‘Or he’d have you.’ But he caught the look on my face, and finally, my mood filtered through the veneer of masculinity. ‘No, you’re right.’
    ‘And our creeper ’s not in the habit of drilling out door locks.’ I nodded in the direction of the kitchen, where the locksmith was still working. ‘Or stomping around people’s front rooms like an amateur. Maybe if he was, the women would have had more of a chance.’
    ‘You’re okay. That’s the important thing.’
    ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
    ‘And I bet the uniforms were pleased.’
    ‘What? That I’d solved the crime for them? Yeah, they were thrilled.’
    The name of the man whose face I’d seen had come to me while I was waiting for them to arrive. It would have come more quickly, but I didn’t know him that well, and it had been a long time since I’d seen him. The kind of people I used to run with, back when I was a teenager growing up on the Thornton estate,