‘Of course,’ said Willis. He aimed a smile at her, began to slow down and swung his vehicle into a side street, which appeared to lead only to a row of deserted lock-ups.
‘This will do,’ he said, putting the car into reverse.
Saslow was still musing about Vogel’s manner.
‘He sounded really stressed out,’ she said. ‘I’ve never heard him quite like that… just can’t imagine what’s got him going. He’s usually so bloody cool…’
They slowed to a halt. Willis switched off the engine.
‘For God’s sake, what are you doing now?’ asked Saslow.
‘I think I need a slash,’ said Willis.
‘Well hurry up then…’ began Saslow.
She managed no more words. Willis’s fist caught her full on the right side of her head. It was a good punch. He was a fit man and he’d trained as a boxer, earlier in his police career. Saslow wasn’t knocked unconscious but she was stunned.
By the time she became fully aware again, she realised that Willis had used his handcuffs to fasten her hands behind her back, then pulled her seatbelt tight around her. Too tight. Her hands and arms were twisted uncomfortably. She was aware of shooting pains in her shoulders and her chest. It felt as if she could hardly breathe.
She began to shout and struggle, kicking out at the man she’d thought was just another colleague. The one she spent the most time with.
‘Stop that,’ Willis commanded. ‘If you do not stop I will kill you, here and now. If you do as I tell you, there is a chance that you might live. I have no wish to hurt you. I am not a common murderer. I need to protect myself, that’s all.’
His voice was very calm.
Saslow was afraid she was going to be sick. She’d heard and used the expression sick with fear, but she didn’t think she’d ever really understood what it had meant before now. She stopped struggling. She would do as she was told. Maybe he was going to hold her hostage. She had been trained for hostage situations but nothing, she thought, could ever prepare you for the real thing. The very thought of it terrified her even more, but she guessed it was her best chance of survival.
She stared at him. The man she knew only as DS John Willis. His eyes were dead and his lips were contorted. His voice sounded different. The tone was deeper than usual and he spoke with the hint of an accent she could not quite recognise. It could have been Greek, or perhaps Latin. Although Saslow, like most people, had never heard much Latin spoken. She wondered how she could not have seen something in that face, heard something in that voice before to make her at least suspicious of John Willis But she never had.
‘You are Aeolus,’ she murmured.
It was not a question, just a statement of fact, which she now accepted with a terrible, clear finality.
‘I am.’ He hissed the words at her, his face close to hers. ‘I am the ruler of the wind. I can dictate the direction the world will take. I can be whomever I want and I can do what I want, just as I have always done. You cannot stop me. No one can stop me.’
His eyes were quite mad. Dawn could not understand how he had been able to hide his obvious insanity so well that neither she, nor Vogel, nor anyone else had suspected anything. How could they have missed it and for so long?
His words were those of a madman too. A madman who had killed three times. At least three times. How many more times might he have killed in his crazy mixed-up life, she wondered?
Her mouth was dry. Her throat was dry. There had previously been frightening moments in Dawn Saslow’s time as a police officer, but she had never before experienced blind terror.
So this was what it felt like.
Almost involuntarily, she began to scream. The uncontrolled wailing of a creature suddenly aware that it is in mortal danger. A sound common to all living things.
He hit her again in the side of the head. It was an even more powerful blow than before.
Afterwards there was nothing.
Twenty-Eight
Sonia Baker had told Vogel that she thought it was Willis she had seen at Bath railway station, the day she had gone there to meet Saul.
‘He’s the man I thought was my Saul, I’m almost sure of it,’ she said. ‘The man who nearly got off the train, then seemed to change his mind. There wasn’t much resemblance to the photograph he’d posted online, but there was something about him. And then there was the way he peered along the platform, as if he were looking for someone. Our eyes met. I was convinced I saw recognition in them.’
Already shocked, Vogel had pressed her, pressurised her even, and it was then that she had said she couldn’t be certain.
‘Not a police officer, surely?’ she’d queried. ‘I mean you work with this man, Mr Vogel. How could it possibly be him?’
‘I don’t know, Miss Baker,’ Vogel had replied. ‘I certainly hope you are mistaken, I know that.’
‘Well, I probably am,’ she said then. ‘After all, surely you’d know if someone you were close to was capable of such terrible things. We’d all know, wouldn’t we?’
‘Well, we’d all like to think we would,’ ventured Vogel cautiously.
‘Yes,’ said Sonia Baker. ‘Yes, of course. Oh, take no notice of me, Mr Vogel. I’m just a silly woman approaching middle age still looking and hoping for love. I get everything wrong.’
But Vogel had taken notice, and his antennae had begun to waggle, even though he didn’t really want them to.
The first file he had looked at on his computer, just after his conversation with Sonia, was the attendance record of MCIT officers. He then double-checked that his immediate suspicions were correct. Timothy Southey had been murdered at the Leicester Square Premier Inn on the same day that Willis had so apologetically requested leave, because his younger child had been taken ill and rushed to hospital. And Vogel clearly remembered Willis going home with a migraine on the day that Melanie Cooke was killed. An excuse to disappear because he could not control one of his identities perhaps, a scenario presented by Professor Heath.
None of this was conclusive and Vogel sincerely hoped he had summoned Saslow and Willis back to Kenneth Steele House quite unnecessarily. It could all still be coincidence and he could be quite wrong in his suspicions.
He decided to call Willis’s ex-wife, now Mrs Vera Court, before alerting DCI Hemmings. Fortuitously, she remained listed as Willis’s next of kin. She was the mother of his children after all and luckily retained an unchanged mobile number.
Vogel opened the conversation by asking if her children were well.
‘Uh yes, very well, thank you,’ Vera had replied. ‘But why are you calling Mr Vogel? Has something happened to John?’
‘No, no,’ Vogel reassured her, thinking to himself that, really, he had little idea what may or may not have happened to John Willis.
‘No, nothing like that,’ he continued. ‘It’s just that I need to check something. Has your son been taken to hospital recently?’
Vera Willis giggled in a nervous sort of way.
‘Our Sam? Fit as a flea, that one. Can’t remember when he was last ill and he’s never been to hospital in his life. Oh, except when he broke his toe playing football, but he wasn’t kept in or anything…’
She paused.
‘What’s this all about, Mr Vogel?’
‘Oh, I’m just checking out attendance records here, that sort of thing,’ Vogel responded, trying to keep his voice light. ‘About a month ago, John suddenly asked for leave, because your son had been taken to hospital. He said it was very serious and he needed to be there. Do I take it that wasn’t the case?’
‘Absolutely not, Mr Vogel.’
‘Was he with you at all around that time?’