The Nightmare Place Read Online Free Page A

were very different from the people I worked with now. I’d done my best to distance myself from all that, and I’d hardly thought about them since dragging myself up and out of the place. But here it was now – a small part of my past breaking into my present.
    Drew MacKenzie was the little brother of one of the girls in the same gang as me. I remembered meeting him a few times at his sister’s place. He’d been a cute kid – must have only been about ten at the time, and I remembered that he’d seemed clever. He had the attitude already, of course: the one children get when they grow up in that type of world, as inevitable a wrapping as the cheap second-hand clothes. Presumably the attitude had won out over the smarts, and he’d followed his sister into the family business.
    Chris said, ‘You’re going to leave him to the rat-catchers, though, right?’
    I didn’t say anything.
    ‘Zoe?’
    ‘ Yes . All right? Do you want me to write it in blood? I’m going to leave him to the rat-catchers.’
    Chris was about to say something else, but he was interrupted by the locksmith, looming in the doorway holding a box of keys and a handful of paperwork.
    ‘Excuse me. All done. I’ve left the old barrel on the counter. Just need a couple of signatures and then I’ll get out of your hair.’
    ‘Thanks. Be right there.’
    ‘When are SOCO due?’ Chris said.
    ‘Any time now. I’ll be in afterwards.’
    ‘You don’t have to. Maybe you should—’
    ‘ Be in afterwards .’
    I gave him a look. If anything, the puppy-dog expression seemed to intensify in the face of it, but we both knew why I had to be. It was now two days since Julie Kennedy had been attacked and raped in her own home. The latest victim of our creeper . She’d been in hospital ever since, and it looked like the doctors might finally allow us in this afternoon to interview her.
    I looked around my front room again. It was just mess and missing things, and that could all be cleaned and replaced. More than that, it could wait. In the face of what had been done to Julie, the damage here was utterly insignificant.
    ‘I’ll be in afterwards,’ I said again quietly. ‘That’s what I should do.’

Three

    You can’t do this .
    Jane sat down in the partially enclosed booth and waited for the button on the telephone to light up, indicating that she had a call. Thinking:
    You can’t do this .
    Her father’s voice, of course. Since his death, she’d spent a great deal of time trying to push that voice out of earshot, or drown it out with more positive thoughts. You can do this. You’re perfectly capable . Sometimes she even managed to believe those things. And yet he was always there in the background, and at stressful moments he came through loud and clear.
    You can’t …
    The light on the phone flashed red.
    Jane picked up the receiver immediately. One thing she really couldn’t do was allow herself to hesitate, because when she did, her body had a habit of freezing up. School, and even university, had been a catalogue of awkward pauses that lengthened into embarrassing silences: moments when she knew everyone was watching and waiting, and all she could do was sit there, growing red under the spotlight of their attention. Act immediately, her therapist had told her since. Fear stems mostly from anticipation, so don’t give yourself time to think. If she’d let the phone ring any longer, it would have rung out.
    ‘Hello.’ Her voice was surprisingly strong. ‘This is Mayday. How can I help you today?’
    There was no reply at first, but the line wasn’t empty. She could hear the man breathing – a slow, heavy sound that made her wonder if this was going to be a sex call. They’d been told about them during training, but nobody in her group had received one yet. She’d get one eventually, but God , she thought, please not now . That would be a baptism of fire.
    Finally, the man spoke. ‘My name’s Gary.’
    ‘Hello, Gary.’ She