He moved fast. Took the money with his left hand, clamped her wrist with his right and slammed her backwards against the car. She cracked her head against the rear windscreen and the screech of his car alarm reverberated with the booming in her skull. She rolled and fell, clutching the back of her head.
He hauled her to her feet and propped her against the side of the car while he popped the boot.
Sick pain throbbed in her skull and the stone setts seemed to ripple under her feet. Her legs buckled, but he caught her stole and twisted it, holding her up.
Can’t breathe! She fought wildly. Tugging at the ligature, his hands. Desperate, she scrabbled for purchase, her fingers tangled in the lapel of his suit jacket.
‘Let go,’ he said.
‘You let go,’ she hissed.
He raised his fist and delivered a punch that exploded white hot pain behind her eyes. Tasha crumpled. He hoisted her up, and she reached into her bag a second time; his face was so close to hers she was afraid he might bite her. As he heaved her towards the back of the car, she brought up a canister of pepper spray and squirted chili-hot liquid into his eyes.
CHAPTER 2
Monday, 17 November, five weeks later
Alan Palmer walked the two miles from his office to the NHS clinic. Fog trickled inland from the waterfront, chafing at his heels, swirling around his ankles like an incoming tide. It overtook him as he began the steep climb up Duke Street, creeping over and around and under and through the traffic, until even the monumental sandstone structure of the Anglican cathedral was obscured. Traffic streamed past him, tearing through the vapour, vehicles trailing tendrils of grey mist in their wake which immediately closed behind them. It grew denser by the minute until, at three in the afternoon, every street was shrouded in murk, so that even the buttery halos of street lamps turned sickly yellow.
The junction with Rodney Street came into view as a smudge of red from the traffic lights and Palmer turned left. Dr William Duncan, the first appointed British Medical Health Officer, had lived on this street in the mid-nineteenth century; now Palmer walked on fifty yards or so, to the three-storey Georgian building that housed Merseyside’s NHS Forensic Psychiatry Service outpatients’ department.
The fog had sunk into the basement; it lapped at the rim of the wall and trailed through the railings. Palmer mounted the steps up to the wide front door and pressed the buzzer for entry, tilting his face to the security camera for identification.
* * *
The consultation room was not that different from any of the serviced offices on the street, except that the furniture was perhaps more worn and the windows on the upper floors were all fitted with metal grilles. There was no couch — Dylan Corbie was not undergoing full psychoanalytic therapy. He was registered as a psychiatric patient with Palmer’s friend and one-time teacher, Karl Atherton. Dr Atherton thought that Dylan might benefit from a more psychoanalytic approach than was the norm, and Palmer had seen him three times a week for the past three months.
Dylan arrived and nodded in recognition of Palmer’s greeting. He then checked the pictures, the position of the chairs around the coffee table, the hooks on the wall. Palmer’s overcoat and scarf were in their usual place on the far-left hook, and this seemed to reassure him. He retrieved a mobile phone from his pocket and began manipulating the keys with both thumbs.
‘Eight Wi-Fi networks enabled,’ he muttered. ‘One unsecured access.’ He switched off the phone and took a slim green notebook and biro from the inner pocket of his hooded jacket, then sat in the chair adjacent to Palmer.
In their early sessions, Dylan had experimented with the other, more distant chair, but this required sitting opposite Palmer, confronting him with the unpleasantness of increased eye contact, and Dylan Corbie did not cope well with eye contact.
‘How are you, Dylan?’ Palmer asked.
He answered by opening his notebook and writing in a small, crabbed script.
A long silence followed, then a lorry rumbled past in the street below and Palmer caught a flash of Dylan’s bright green eyes as he glanced towards the window, then flinched and looked away, as though he had seen something beyond the steel mesh and the glass. But it was fully dark, and anyway, the consultation room was on the second floor: all Dylan would be able to see was his own reflection.
‘Why are you concerned about unsecured networks, Dylan?’
‘They can sneak in and change things,’ Dylan said. ‘Like here. It’s unsecure — open access.’ He cast wildly about the room, as if he might find one of the previous occupants hiding behind the furniture. ‘Why can’t I come and see you at your other place?’ he pleaded.
‘We discussed this during our first session,’ Palmer said.
‘Yeah,’ Dylan’s lip curled. ‘The freak’s too high-risk to be out in public.’
‘This is a public place, Dylan,’ Palmer said.
‘I can pay. I’m loaded since she died.’ Dylan’s mother had been killed in a holiday boating accident in April, leaving him an orphan. Rich, and completely alone.
‘This clinic is less isolated,’ Palmer said. ‘It has trained staff other than me around. Which protects us.’
‘Protects you, you mean.’
‘You, too.’
Dylan looked Palmer in the eye. ‘I didn’t threaten to kill myself.’
‘No,’ Palmer said, keeping his voice matter-of-fact, unemotional. ‘You threatened to kill a playground full of seven-year-old boys.’ Dylan lost eye contact, and Palmer added, ‘Your father died when you were seven, Dylan.’ He wasn’t checking the detail but drawing his patient’s attention to it.
In fact, Dylan’s father had committed suicide — but in recent months, Palmer had found that word hard to say.
Dylan glared at him. ‘You think I went for the kids so I could chicken out of killing myself?’
It seemed that Dylan was more willing to question the projections and defences of his unconscious than Palmer was.
Maybe Karl Atherton is right, Palmer thought. Maybe I’m not ready for this.
CHAPTER 3
Cassie Rowan tore through the twilight gloom, arms pumping, her fists punching holes in a thickening fog. She screamed for assistance, but none came.
He’s so close! Her stupid shoes didn’t have enough grip and he gained crucial yards. Her fake-fur shrug slipped from her shoulders, pinning her arms, and she threw it off, losing a few more paces.
She screamed again into her body mic, ‘Officer in pursuit of suspect. On Jamaica Street heading north. Have eyeball Furman. Repeat — in pursuit! Request assistance.’ Then, abandoning codenames and protocols, ‘Wicksie, get your lazy arse over here!’
They pelted past warehouses and lock-ups, her quarry’s feet thudding heavily on the pavement. He darted left without warning and sprinted across the street.
‘He’s ducked into—’ She swore softly. ‘No road name — Watkinson, maybe, or Bridgewater Street. Where the hell are you, Wicksie?’
A car turned the corner, the headlights throwing long shadows into a gathering mist, grille lights flashing blue and red.
DC Roy Wicks leaned out of the window and yelled, ‘Go get him, tiger!’
The fleeing man skittered off the pavement and pounded across a tussocky strip of grass. His way was barred by a grey zinc alloy fence. DC Rowan eased back, keeping a few yards’ distance between them. He was well over her fighting weight and, once cornered, she knew this man would not hesitate to use his fists against a woman.