Page 43 of Absent Remorse

“You think this is the key to a locker at the main station?” Simon asked.

“Specifically to locker 104.”

It was another layer to the puzzle, but clearly not one as difficult as the ones before. Perhaps the killer thought that someone who had solved the previous layer deserved to have an easy run in to the end of all of this.

Which worried Amber, because why would the killer make it simple when it meant him being caught?

“The killer must know that we got through the previous layer,” she said. “That means that he’s probably getting ready to run.”

“So, he uses the puzzle to know when we’re getting close to him andthenhe runs?” Simon said.

“He uses the puzzle to slow us down, giving him time to kill as many victims as possible,” Amber said. “Then he runs once he knows that we’re onto him.”

She’d assumed before that the killer would be sitting waiting for them at the end of the trail he’d laid with the puzzle, but this last clue had made her think that it might not work that way. It suggested a last-ditch attempt to slow them down or deflect them, something that might have been designed to give the killer minutes or hours in which to escape.

It was obvious that Simon was rapidly coming to the same conclusion as Amber. “We need to get to the station fast.”

They ran back to the car, and if Amber had thought that they’d been speeding through the streets before, it was nothing compared to the way that Simon drove now. He skidded around a corner, shot in between a couple of cars, and kept going at a speed that left Amber clinging to the dashboard for dear life.

She heard horns blaring, but they were quickly lost behind the two of them as Simon kept driving. She’d done some of the defensive driving training it took to be an agent, but there had been nothing like this level of speed and determination, this willingness to do whatever it took to get to the killer before he was able to make a run for it.

A locker at a train station might mean that the killer planned to take a train as soon as they solved the last layer of the puzzle. It might not just be his attempt to run, it might be an attempt to give them a final chance to catch him. He might be telling them his escape route, asking them whether they were going to be fast enough to catch up to him.

Judging by the way Simon was driving, they might be quick enough. The parked cars and buildings beside the road were a blur now as Simon sped through the city, a look of almost terrifying determination on his face. He clearly wasn’t going to risk letting a killer go simply because he was late.

They skidded to a halt in front of a railway station. Simon was already out of the car as Amber leapt out with the key in her hand, determined to follow up on the lead. The two of them ran into the station, filled with people on a busy morning, so that even if the killer was here anywhere, then it would have been impossible to pick him out from the crowd even if they’d known what he looked like.

“Which way are the lockers?” Simon asked a security guard, showing his badge as he did so.

“What is it?” the man asked. “What’s going on?”

“There’s no time. Which way?”

Something about the urgency in Simon’s tone must have gotten through to the man, because he pointed to a door at one side of the station’s main concourse. Amber found herself following along in Simon’s wake once more, into a large room filled with storage lockers, bare except for them and a couple of central pillars. There were a couple of older women putting things away in a locker, but based on the security footage from before, Amber doubted that either of them had anything to do with the killings.

“We need you to evacuate the room for now,” Simon said, holding his badge up.

“What is it?” one of the women asked. “Is it some kind of bomb? It’s a bomb, isn’t it?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Simon said. “But we still need the room. It’s potentially a crime scene.”

The two women looked at each other and only turned to leave reluctantly once it was clear that Simon wasn’t going to back down. Amber suddenly found herself hoping that they were right about all of this, because if they weren’t, the disturbance of them charging across the city would be enough to get her thrown off the case, and probably Simon too.

If it stopped any more people from being killed, though, it was more than worth the risk. As the older women left the room, it was strangely silent.

Amber still had the key clutched in her hand, tightly enough that her knuckles were white with the effort of it. She went hunting along the rows of lockers, moving as quickly as she could, not wanting to waste another moment if it would give the killer a chance to get away.

She found locker number 104 about halfway up a block of them, its grey metal door slightly scuffed from years of hard use. The lock sat there waiting for her, and the shape of it seemed like it would fit the key that she held. She went to insert it in the lock.

Simon was there then with a hand on her arm, stopping her.

“Wait!” he said.

“What is it?”

“Those women before might have a point. What if someone has booby trapped the locker? What if this is their way of getting rid of anyone who gets too far with all of this?”

“Do you think that’s likely?” Amber asked, looking at the locker and trying to see any sign of tampering. The truth was that she simply didn’t have any idea what a locker that had been rigged with some kind of trap would look like.

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