Chapter Twelve

"Do you really think this will work?" Chad asked, peeking a look out of the window.

"Yes," James hissed, and yanked Chad out of sight by his shirt collar. "If you don't get seen."

James's black sedan and an escort of three marked police cars and two motorbikes took off from the car park at speed. James paced reception back and forth until the slap of his shoes began to grate on Chad's nerves. Lucy sat on a plastic chair, tugging her bottom lip.

"They bought it," Lynn confirmed. Unlike Chad who'd been yanked from the window, James allowed her to look.

James's decoy plan had worked, and the press had taken the bait and packed up their things to pursue the black sedan.

"No escort?" Chad asked.

James stopped. "I'm sure we can handle Vincent."

"Is the superintendent okay with this?"

"The superintendent just wants us to find Harriet. Whatever we have to do to achieve that he's happy to turn a blind eye to as long as we get the result we want."

Lucy snorted drawing James's glare.

"Sorry," she said, covering her mouth. "The result you want, sounds like the police, out for themselves. As usual."

"We're ready for Vincent." James told Lynn, before speaking to Chad. "I'll meet you in the car."

"Where am I going?" Lucy asked. "I'm not sitting in the middle seat. I don't want to be up close and personal with the man that killed my sister."

"You can follow behind us in your truck." James replied before hurrying out of reception.

Chad knew it would take time for Lynn and Pauline to get Vinicent ready, time he could spend alone with James. He sighed, pushing to his feet. The Romeo and Juliet tactic. James seemed more likely to cave Chad's face in than open up about his relationship with Harriet, but he had to at least try.

He paused. "Lynn, have you got that list for me yet?"

Lynn stiffened. "Almost."

"Almost?"

She didn't meet his eye.

"What list?" Lucy asked.

Chad frowned at Lynn's obvious avoidance. "I asked for a list of Vincent's contacts. People he wrote to, called, had visit him."

"Why do you want to know that?" Lucy bit her lip. "In case he told them something about Harriet?"

"Yeah," he shrugged. "So I can contact them to ask for information."

Lucy nodded. "That sounds smart."

"I better help Pauline with Vincent." Lynn said, avoiding the topic entirely.

Lucy fished her keys out of her pocket. "James better drive sensibly today."

"He will," Chad promised, holding the door for her.

They strolled across the car park in silence. Lucy shot him a small smile as she climbed in her truck, and Chad took a deep breath, approaching James.

James sat in the driver's seat with his head in his hands. He shot up when Chad opened the door, and got in next to him.

"I honestly don't know why it takes them so long to get him." James pressed back in his seat. "They should just … throw him in here and let me make him tell us."

"I don't think the superintendent could turn a blind eye to that."

James smirked. "You'd tell him, would you?" He looked up at Chad. "Even if we got the result, you'd tell him the means I used to get it?"

Chad didn't answer.

"Pauline would, that's for sure. I don't know how that woman can look after him."

"She's doing her job."

James drummed his fingers against the wheel. "You know, I'd still do it."

"Do what?"

"Beat a location out him—"

"James—"

"DI Poole," James growled. "You made it quite clear you didn't want to be on friendly terms. And if I thought I could beat a location out of him, I would, but the fact is, I don't think I can. I don't think he'd tell me. The last drive, with him … talking about my daughter," he filled up with a deep breath before easing it out, "it proved to me he's a lot more with it than I first thought. This is a game to him."

Chad swallowed. "I told you that. I told you he had no intention of giving us anything."

"Well, I didn't believe you, all right, and now we've got to save face, and go along with this until we run out the clock, do what he wants for the slimmest chance he might give us something. We're in it for the 1% chance of finding her, but it doesn't mean I like the idea of sitting in a car with him. It doesn't mean I don't want to reach into the backseat and strangle him, because I do, and I'd rather not be observed by the press while I battle with myself not to."

"James—DI Poole," Chad corrected, crunching his toes in his shoes. "You were the last person to see Harriet alive. I have to ask, what was she doing in your car?"

"You've read my statement, no doubt. I was cautioning her for possession."

"Michael and Lucy seem to believe—"

"Oh, I've heard all about you getting pally with Michael…"

"I visited him."

James snorted. "Nice to know who's side you're on."

"I'm on nobody's side. They have their opinion, and I have mine."

"And what do you think, Chad? Am I the predatory pedophile protected by the badge on my chest?"

"So far that's the only explanation I've been given over your past behavior. If you could tell me—"

"I don't need to prove my innocence, to you least of all."

"I know. I'm not asking for your innocence. I just want the truth. Your truth."

"No one ever wanted to hear my truth."

"I thought I was in love once," Chad began. James tensed beside him, but didn't interrupt. "It was safe, comfortable, and I could've spent my life like that. It would've been a hell of a lot less painful if I'd just have stayed in that numb bubble forever, but I'm so glad I didn't. The pain, the humiliation, the times where I physically wanted to rip my own brain from my skull was all worth it to feel love. Real love."

James shifted his focus to Chad. His eyes were cold, and hard, but he didn't snarl or interrupt, he waited for Chad to continue.

"And I've never told anyone. Never admitted how I felt because no one would understand, they couldn't possibly, they'd not even give me a chance to explain it, they cast me out, and you'll hate me for it, you'll probably scream at me to get out the car, but I'm going to say it anyway. I fell in love with Romeo Knight in that farmhouse."

"He was a serial killer."

"But he was also Romeo, and I fell in love with him. He burst the numb bubble I'd built around myself. He listened to me. He was there for me. And maybe if I'd have been stronger, it wouldn't have happened, but it did."

James leaned away from him, pressing into the door of the car, he twisted his body to face Chad, and looked at him, really looked, then he laughed, a rumbly mocking laugh that lifted the hair at Chad's nape.

"Seriously?" James sneered.

"What?"

"I know what you're trying to do Chad. You're trying to find out about me and Harriet, but fuck me," he shuddered. "Telling me you loved Romeo Knight, that's seriously messed up to compare the two. He was a fucking monster, a psychopath who murdered innocent people for the thrill of it, and you're trying to pull comparisons?"

Chad looked away. "I just—I understand what it feels like to care about someone you know you shouldn't."

James chuckled, "You're continuing with this? Are you serious? I wasn't searching for a victim, I didn't kidnap Harriet and brainwash her in the hope she'd love me, or am I you in your messed up comparison, Chad? Was I in a numb bubble and she was there to pop it for me? She was the one who manipulated me?"

"Forget it," Chad snapped. "I was just trying to understand."

"I cautioned her for possession—"

"You are lying," Chad shouted. "You picked her up from school that day and drove her to Melbourn Spring. You'd been sending her gifts—"

"Gifts? Name me one. One gift."

Chad couldn't. But he was angry and James's smug smile only made it worse.

"You waited around the church after her choir practice. You were obsessed with her, and Michael tried to get you to back off, Harriet told you to leave her alone."

James shook his head. "Michael made her go to the station with him. She didn't want to report me."

"She was afraid of you."

"No! She wasn't. She liked me, and I liked her, and yeah, it was fucked up. I'd buried my daughter, and my wife was barely talking to me, and Harriet was seventeen. All we did was talk. And maybe I wanted more, and maybe she did, too, but it never happened."

"Why was she in your car?"

"I told her it had to stop. Whatever was happening between us, it had to stop before it truly started. It was already a mess. I'd been warned off her at work, and Michael had run a smear campaign against me, making fliers about the pedophile on the police force and handing them out at every school in Bardhum." He took a deep breath. "My wife needed me, and I'd been selfish, I'd been flattered getting attention from this pretty seventeen-year-old. That was all it was. I didn't love her. That's not what this has all been about." He gestured to the prison. "She was upset and left the car. I went after her, but she screamed at me to let her go. She said if I didn't, she'd go to her dad and they'd drive to the station and report me, and she'd make sure I was arrested, so I backed off. I got in my car, and I drove straight home to my wife. It was my fault she was walking alone on that road. I put her in the path of that monster."

The reception doors opened, and Chad spotted Lynn wheeling Vincent over to them. Pauline walked beside them, stern faced, with her bag of equipment over one of her shoulders.

"But to compare me and Harriet, to you and Romeo to get your answers, that's low, and I hope they were just foolish words, in a desperate attempt to know about us, because if they weren't, if you really did fall for a psychopathic serial killer and you're some kind of sympathizer," he tilted his head to the window, nodding at Wiltknot, "I'll do everything in my power to make sure you end up in there with the rest of the animals."

The back passenger door opened. Lynn helped get Vincent onto the backseat, then slammed the door. Pauline jogged around to the other side and climbed in.

"Didn't interrupt something, did I?" Vincent asked.

Chad inwardly cursed, and glanced at James, but he didn't meet Chad's eyes.

James stabbed his keys into the ignition and twisted. "As it happens, you did miss a bit of a bombshell."

Chad tensed. "James—"

"DI Poole," James corrected. "Chad here told me he was in love with Romeo Knight. You know, the psychopathic serial killer who kidnapped him."

Chad squeezed his eyes shut, inwardly counting to ten.

"That was obvious," Vincent murmured. "I assumed everyone knew."

Chad opened his eyes, and turned to look at Vincent.

Vincent smiled. "But what I've always wondered is whether Romeo loves him back."

"Of course he didn't." James snorted. "How could he?"

"Quite right, DI Poole. Psychopaths can't love, they can't feel, but they're very good at manipulating na?ve people into thinking they can."

Then he smiled his devil's smile, directing it right at Chad.

****

Magpies.

Chad hated them, but they made it impossible not to look, clucking and cawing down at their car from the trees. When Chad looked out the side mirror he spotted Lucy's truck, and her anxious face peeking above the steering wheel.

Melbourn Spring was somewhat of a beauty spot, set back in the trees, a pool of clear water, so clear condom wrappers could be seen on the stones at the bottom. Vincent had only made it to the edge of the spring with Pauline's help. He'd slid down his nose canula and taken a deep breath of fresh air. The absolute wonder on his face as he gazed around made Chad feel like he encroached on a private moment.

The look didn't last, though, Vincent had slumped, and hastily shoved the tube back under his nose before Pauline helped him back to the car. Lucy hadn't left her truck. Chad and James followed Vincent, and then sat in silence while Pauline dosed Vincent up on more morphine on the back seat.

"I remember driving along here." Vincent pointed out the windscreen, and James started the engine.

"Here?" James pressed.

His voice had softened since Vincent had started to remember things. Chad zoned them out, and let James and Vincent talk back and forth without comment. He picked up on a few bits, like Vincent remembering Harriet leaning against the huge oak tree beside the road. How she'd been reluctant at first, but he charmed her, told her he was the swimming coach for St Mary's, and it wasn't safe for young women to be walking around on their own. He'd killed her, and drove her back to his house which had been long ago knocked down, and a developer bought the land for cheap, and built an office block on top.

Conveniently, when it got to what happened next—what he did with her body— Vincent grew tired and asked to be driven back to Wiltknot.

James didn't kick off like Chad expected. He nodded, fully pulled back in by Vincent and his cooperation during the drive. Silver tongued. Chad didn't know who'd first used the term for Vincent, but it had stuck for a reason.

"What the hell?" James mumbled, slowing the car to a stop. The ones in front of them were awkwardly reversing, turning around, and driving off. Chad could spy the bridge in the distance, a car askew between the flashing police lights.

"Road's closed." Chad said, spotting the sign propped up, and the police officer beside it in hi-vis, circling his finger in a gesture for everyone to turn around.

James ignored the gesture and drove up to him. "We need to get through."

"No. You need to turn around and find an alternate route."

James gritted his teeth, reaching into the side of his door, he pulled out his ID and showed it to the officer. "This is the most direct route to Wiltknot. We need to get through," James waved a flippant hand, "we'll drive on the hard shoulder if we need to while you clear the road."

The officer paled. He glanced back. "I'm sorry, sir, but that won't be possible."

Chad flung open his door, and got out. He frowned at the police cars in the distance, their blue lights strobed in the darkness.

"What's happened?" Chad asked.

"Someone … jumped."

Chad looked back up the road to the blue lights flashing against the bridge.

"My sergeant told me to close the road while we wait for the ambulance."

"Ambulance?" Pauline gasped. She tried her handle, only to curse at the locks James had on in the back before clambering onto Chad's seat and leaving the car that way.

"I'm a nurse."

The officer nodded. "I don't think there's much you can do—"

Pauline took off down the road with her shoulder bag swinging.

"I'm going to check it out," James said, unbuckling himself. "You stay here with Vincent."

"I'd prefer if—"

"I'm your superior, Chad. Get back in the car."

Chad slumped, dropping back into his seat. He closed his door, then winced when James slammed his shut. James didn't take off in a sprint like Pauline had, he strolled closer to the flashing blues like he was enjoying a casual walk.

"Alone again at last."

Chad ignored Vincent and adjusted the mirror to see Lucy behind him.

"DI Poole was eating up my every word today, but not you, not Chad Fuller. You weren't listening at all."

"I'll listen when you say something interesting."

"These little trips, our meetings. I've found them quite enjoyable."

"I'm glad someone has."

"Why did you break your promise?"

Chad exhaled through his nose. "I didn't want to see you."

"Want doesn't come into it. We made a deal. I helped you save Shawn. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have gotten to him in time… I read that you gave him CPR until an ambulance arrived."

Chad found Vincent's glare in the mirror. "What is this whole spectacle about?"

"I wasn't the one who turned it into a spectacle."

"You went to the press."

"I can assure you I didn't. I don't go to the press. They come to me, and they beg, plead and bribe me to give them something, but they get nothing from me. Someone else got them involved."

"Why are you doing this?"

"The why is obvious. I'm angry at you for not visiting, but what is this exactly?"

"You talk in riddles."

Vincent leaned between the seats. His spine creaked, and he took an extra wheeze of oxygen. "I'll make my words plain enough for you to understand. Four words."

"Four words?"

"Will bring about your downfall."

Chad frowned. "Let's hear them? Do your worst."

"I'm not ready to speak them yet," Vincent held up four fingers for Chad to see. "But that's all it's going to take. Four words that will poison your life forever. That is how I win."