The first step was to break the news to Alison that Dhalla was free once more, robbing her of the sense of security she had enjoyed for just one day. Strict measures were put in place to protect her but no-one knew where Dhalla was or what his next move would be.
Alison had mentally mapped out her flat, estimating where her best chances of survival or escape lay. It was not easy. He had lived there. He knew every nook and cranny. Any hiding place would be futile to a hunter as determined as he. She was terrified. She wondered when and how he would get her.
She opted to spend what would be a sleepless night under the kitchen table. Nerves wrecked and weeping uncontrollably, she found her heart was racing. How was she going to get through this? She had a life to lead, patients to care for. When would this terror end? At least her parents had decided to get away from it all to the safety of their long-planned holiday on Lundy Island in the middle of the Bristol Channel.
She felt exhausted; she could not continue like this. At times she wished he would find her and something, anything, would happen that would end the nightmare one way or another. She knew her kitchen table shelter would offer little protection or refuge but it might, just might, buy her time.
In the small hours she was awoken from a shallow doze. ‘Open up, police, open up!’ came an insistent shout, as the flat was lit up by a sweep of blinding torchlight through the thin curtains.
Terrified and struggling to place the voice, she edged towards the door, her fingers about to punch out 999 on the phone that never left her side.
‘Alison Hewitt?’
‘Yes,’ she confirmed, having now placed the voice as that of Rick, her blond six-foot saviour from before.
Relieved, she let them in. She sensed that something had happened that might draw all this to a close.
‘Someone’s set fire to your mum’s house,’ came the bombshell.
‘What?’ was all she could manage in reply, a thousand scenarios going through her exhausted mind.
‘You need to come with us. Back to the police station. You’ll be safe there.’
As she grabbed what she could in the short time the insistent officers allowed, they explained that it was almost certainly arson. The whole perimeter of the house was a ring of fire with the front and back doors ablaze.
Alison slouched, shell-shocked, in the back of the police car during the short drive to Brighton Police Station. She knew that she was as safe as she could ever be right now, but still her instinctive fear that Al would pounce from nowhere was never far from the surface.
Once inside the fortress police station, she spent the next hours learning about events as they arose, and revealing, under the gentle skill of Emily Hoare’s questioning, the fine details of her life with Al.
The whole family was at risk, but Paul’s nomadic lifestyle and the difficulty even Alison had in contacting him, reassured the police that he was probably safe from Dhalla. Pam and David, on the other hand, were clearly in his sights.
Strict procedures kicked in to ensure the likely targets were protected as far as possible. Potential victims are sometimes served with notices called Osman warnings. These set out the risks, what the victim can do and how they should co-operate with the police to protect themselves. Carly Chase’s version is set out in Dead Man’s Grip and demonstrates the impact such a notice must have. Some accept them. Others, like Red, are more reluctant to change their habits in the interests of survival.
Long-term measures take some time to put in place. Therefore, the default in an emergency such as this is for those at risk to be whisked away to police stations. Hence, Alison being safely ensconced in the largest one in Sussex. The race now was to get Pam and David somewhere safe; even their choice of isolated holiday island seemed to be known to Dhalla. Efforts to contact them on their mobile phones to warn them of the threat came to nothing. Fears were growing that he had already struck.
The stark reality was, though, that up until now, Al could only have been arrested for the minor offence of breaching his bail. The fire changed all that. It was now a case of finding him before someone was killed.
He was so resourceful that he could easily strike again and that could be whenever, wherever and at whomever he chose. He was calling the shots. This was as intense as Grace’s hunt for Dr Crisp in You Are Dead.
Thames Valley Police had discovered, to their horror, that a neighbourhood police office near Aston Abbotts had been set alight around the same time as Alison’s mother’s house. Luckily again, it was empty but given that fires rarely happen in that area, the two blazes within hours of each other just had to be linked. Dhalla was running amok since his release from custody in Wiltshire.
A bleary-eyed DCI Nev Kemp was called in and started coordinating the race to catch this madman. The crosshairs of Al’s hate were shifting between Alison and her parents. Nev knew they all needed protection and needed it now. Eventually he was told that an officer had finally managed to speak to a hotel receptionist on the Island and Pam and David were safe, for now.
Nev picked up the phone.
Devon and Cornwall Police leapt into action the second Nev finished the call. In scenes more akin to a James Bond movie than Middle England tranquillity, a team of heavily armed officers dressed head to toe in black combat gear were air-dropped through the early morning mist onto Lundy. They sprinted to a waiting David and Pam who, having been alerted earlier, were cowering behind their door. Briefed by a gruff officer they grasped the danger they were in.
Minutes later they were being rushed across the dew-soaked lawn towards the waiting helicopter. Some of the crack police team leapt into the chopper seconds before take off. Others had already secreted themselves around the mainland ferry station as Nev could not be sure Dhalla wouldn’t be there waiting for Pam and David.
While this military-style operation was unfolding in the Bristol Channel, Alison was still outlining her life history to Emily and her gentle-giant sergeant, Colin Jaques. They were establishing that Dhalla had free and ready access to all Alison’s emails and texts — how else would he have known when and where she would be?
The decision was taken that she and her family would be hidden away in a quaint little hotel along the coast in sleepy Eastbourne. They would check in under false names and no phones or credit cards would be allowed. Their survival depended on no-one knowing who or where they were.
Back at Brighton Police Station, another threat hit Nev like a bolt from the blue. He shared his concern with his second in command, DI Jon Wallace.
‘Christ, Jon, you know we’ve turned the tables on ourselves.’
‘Sorry, Nev, not with you,’ admitted Jon.
‘We’ve gone from hunters to hunted.’
‘How so?’
‘I have identified a hire car he is using and it was in Brighton just hours after the fires. He must have seen the police cars we have stationed outside Alison’s flat to protect the neighbours. Dhalla has shown that nothing is going to get in his way. He knows we are going to nick him if we see him. He’s already torched one police office. If he knows we have got the family with us he is going to be furious. There is every chance he’s going to try to get us too.’
In assessing Dhalla, Nev mirrored Grace’s reflections of Bryce: He has to win, there’s no other possible option for him. He would kill her and then himself, and see that as a grand act of defiance. This was what we were up against.
‘Shit, you’re right. We need to put some protection around the police station and the safe hotel. He’s clearly capable of doing us some serious damage too,’ deduced Jon.