Witch (Sydney Hart #1)

"You can't be talking about the same Vincent," I said. "He's been in my flat. I've seen him, touched him and..." I wanted to say fallen in love with him, but something stopped me. I looked at my father and added, "You found my missing iPod. You told Mac to bring it over, but Mac was too busy, so he gave it to..."

"I've never touched your iPod," my father barked at me, then smiled. "I see, so what you're saying is all of your evidence against me is on the say-so of a dying man who sounded like Elmer Fudd, and a note left by a ghost. I can see the jury now. They'll laugh you out of court. It won't even get to court, you stupid girl."

"Vincent isn't a ghost!" I screamed back at him, feeling suddenly confused and panicked.

"He's dead," my father smiled, as another bolt of lightning zigzagged across the night sky. "He's rotting in Cliff View Cemetery."

"You're lying," I spat, my heart turning cold in my chest as I took the letter from the bottle.

... This is the dying declaration of Police Constable Lee 5013

I read the line over and over, and in my mind's eye, I saw those numbers 5013 glisten before me. I had seen those numbers before. They had been pinned to Vincent's epaulettes. With every part of me beginning to prickle with gooseflesh, I realised how everything Vincent had done had been leading me to this very moment  -  to discovering the truth about my father. The Police song, Message In A Bottle, which he had downloaded to my iPod, the bottle he had left for me on my coffee table, the file he had shown me with the statements and letter from Jonathan Smith, the scars on his back and head, probably caused as he crashed into the bottom of the well. In my heart, I heard him whisper as he held me close on the bed, 'I know what it's like to be scared and alone.'

With my heart aching, I dropped to my knees in the mud, his letter clenched in my fist. Vincent had been describing how he had felt as he lay dying in the bottom of the well. To think of him on his own, dying in a foot of water next to Molly Smith's broken body, made me feel as if my heart had been ripped from my chest.

"Vincent!" I screamed, throwing my head back, letting the rain fall upon my upturned face.

I couldn't hear him anymore, just the sound of the rain, the wind, and thunder. I knew he had gone. He had come to do what he had needed to do.

Lowering my face and turning towards my father, I looked at him and whispered, "I hate you!"

"You'll get over it," he grunted.

I leapt at my father again, my hands outstretched before me, just wanting to rake the flesh from his smug-looking face. "Vincent was a better cop than you  -  he was a better man than you. That's why you murdered him."

"Get off me!" my father roared, throwing me from him. "You've lost your fucking mind. No one is going to believe a word you say."

"But they'll believe me," Michael said, suddenly stepping forward and smashing his fist straight into my father's face. There was a sickening crack as my father's nose spread in a bloody mess. He dropped onto his arse in the mud. "It's over!" Michael shouted beneath another flash of purple lightning.

"It's far from over," my father said, taking his hand from his nose and looking down at the blood.

"It's over," Michael breathed.

As quick as the lightning flashed again overhead, my father shot his hand out at Michael. Clenched in his fist was his can of police-issue CS spray. A jet of thick, white fluid shot from the nozzle of the can, hitting Michael in the eyes. Throwing his hands to his face, Michael staggered backwards towards the well. I watched as my father leapt to his feet. He raced towards Michael and pushed him hard in the chest with the balls of his hands. Michael tumbled backwards, blind by the CS spray which was now making his eyes feel as if they were ablaze inside his skull. He hit the wall of the well and disappeared over the edge.

I leapt through the air at my father. Michael had managed to cling to the edge of the well with his fingers. My father had started to prise them free.

"Leave him alone!" I screamed as Michael hung over the deep well of blackness.

"Fuck off!" my father barked, lashing out at me with his arm.

I fell backwards into the wet mud. With the wind knocked from me, I gasped mouthfuls of air into my lungs as I struggled to my feet. I clawed at my father's legs as I tried to get up. Reaching out, I gripped the end of his baton, yanking it from his utility belt. I staggered to my feet, and locking out my arm, I racked the hard piece of steel. I brought the baton down on my father's legs over and over again. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground, crying out in pain and clutching his knees. Dropping the baton, I reached down into the well, taking hold of Michael's wrists. The rain had made his skin slippery, and I could feel him sliding from my grasp and down into the pitch black.

"Help me," I begged Michael. "Push yourself up."

"I can't," Michael cried out. "I think I've broken my hip."

He screamed in agony as I pulled on his wrists. Michael looked up, his eyes puffed closed and red.

"I can't do this on my own," I cried out, knowing I was going to lose him to the well just like I had Vincent.

The rope! I suddenly thought.

I glanced back over my shoulder in search of it, but all I could see was my father shuffling towards me with the baton raised above his head.