by Wes Markin
‘And?’
‘Well, her response was odd. Not what I expected at all.’ Yorke took another mouthful of beer.
‘Go on.’
‘She started crying.’
‘Crocodile tears.’
‘Yes, I know, but it still took me by surprise. Then, she started to talk about regeneration again. In particular, change. All that stuff that Mayers had been spouting about in his letter. She claimed that Tobias had changed her. That she wasn’t the same person anymore. That she could see outside herself now.’
‘And?’
‘And … nothing. That was her demand. She wants to see Tobias again, or she won’t tell us where Mayers is.’
‘And you told her where to stick it?’ Patricia turned Yorke’s head to make eye contact.
Yorke pulled his head back. ‘Of course!’
‘Good.’
‘Although, we are kind of desperate. Mayers is out there, and what he’s managed to do with Rose Hill is truly frightening.’
‘Don’t you waver, Mike. We’re talking about a seven year-old boy.’
‘I know … I know …’ Yorke had another mouthful. ‘I’m going to look at those letters he sent her in jail. They’ll be scanned in by now. I have to hope she was bluffing about the letters she destroyed, that the answer she claims to have found is still in those letters.’
Patricia sighed.
Yorke looked at her. ‘Are you disappointed?’
‘Why?’
‘No reason …’
‘No, go on.’
‘I think you were expecting us to spend some time together.’
She smiled. ‘Yes … but this is so important, I understand.’
‘There’s nothing I want more, Pat, than to be with you. That’s why I came home … It’s just …’
She put a finger to his lips, ‘… that there’s a cold-hearted psychopath out there?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, stop thinking, and go and do what you need to.’
Yorke drank his beer quickly. Patricia could only imagine the anxiety her husband was currently enduring. She hoped the alcohol would soothe him. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so … All this talk of change! I’m just wondering when it is my turn! I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel going around and around. No matter how many of them I stop, they always seem to keep on coming back, and each time, no matter how many times, I can’t seem to satisfy this hunger to stop them.’
She held him tightly.
Afterwards, as heavy winds flogged the night, Yorke sat by a small light in the office, reading Mayers’ letters, wondering how one mind could become so twisted in on itself.
Then after that, he turned out the light, closed his eyes and listened to hailstones beat a cadence on his window and wondered how long it would be before he too was finally consumed by everything he’d seen and experienced.
And following this, Yorke fell asleep and dreamed of the woman he’d loved for so long, even after her death, and spoke her name out loud several times in the darkness.
Charlotte.
Charlotte.
Charlotte.
18
DECEMBER 29th
GARDNER LIFTED HER head, rubbed sleep out of her eyes and looked down at her notes on the desk in front of her. She’d drooled on them and some of the words were smudged.
She went to the toilet, splashed water on her face until she felt like she could string a sentence together, and then returned to the desk to phone Yorke.
‘Morning, Emma.’
‘Jesus, Mike, you sound worse than me.’
‘The world according to Louis Mayers didn’t make for easy reading. I didn’t sleep too well afterwards. I did make notes on the letters, but Lacey was right, I’m afraid, there was no indication of his whereabouts. I’ll send the notes and the letters over this morning, so you can start looking over them yourself while I make my way back up.’
‘You should get a train, Mike. You must be burned out.’
‘I’ll be fine when I get some caffeine in me. I have some Pro Plus in my car.’
She looked down at the empty packet by her own notes. ‘You did. Sorry about that, Mike.’
‘Well, I guess this is what happens when you practically live together. With no caffeine then, you’ll have to wake me up with what you’ve found out.’
‘Not a great amount, I’m afraid. I researched the universities. If Mayers had an ambition to lecture, then surely, he’d opt for his passion – Psychology? I can’t see him at the University of Law or Leeds Art University, can you?’
‘No.’
‘So, the three universities offering Psychology are: Leeds Beckett, the University of Leeds and Leeds Trinity. I’m going to try and contact the admin departments today, but we are smack bang in the middle of the Christmas holidays, so I hold little hope. Using the internet, I researched the professors working in Psychology across the universities. Most of them had photographs online, so it was easy to whittle down the possibilities to three. Have you got a pen, Mike?’
‘Yes.’
‘Here are three male professors of Psychology, without online photographs, all in their mid-fifties.’
Gardner read them out and Yorke wrote them down.
‘So, if you get their addresses from HQ, Mike, I could visit this morning?’
‘Nice try, Emma. There is only one place these three names are going right now, and that’s to Rosset. I’d have to be insane to let you go alone, when Rosset has that small army at his disposal.’
‘Mike—’
‘Roles reversed?’
Gardner sighed. ‘I’d make the same decision.’
‘Sit tight, Emma. Read Mayers’ letters that I send to you. I’ll text the password for the encrypted file.’
‘Okay.’
‘I shall be there in four hours or so. Try and get some sleep.’
‘How’s Patricia?’
‘Patient, Emma.’ Yorke sighed this time. ‘God help me if she wasn’t.’
Alan piled up the four beermats on the corner of the oak table and pushed the pint he wasn’t really drinking to the other corner of the table. He then reached into his rucksack at his feet and pulled out his four Chinese Mud Men and a ruler. He lined them up, so they were exactly four centimetres apart. He wondered, briefly, what his collection would look like with the fifth fisherman holding the long spear if it hadn’t been used in the murder of a Chinese businessman and sealed away in an evidence box.
As always, when staring at his figurines, he experienced a pleasant loss in time. When he did, eventually, pull himself from his reverie, he recalled that he was in the Campus pub – the Old Bar. It was the first time he’d been here. Watering holes aren’t the best of destinations if you’ve no friends to drink with. Unless you were a drunkard, that is, but such an uneven, chaotic state of being repulsed him.
It was New Year’s Eve. The shift from one year to the next represented order, so he saw the logic in their celebrations. He took a mouthful of craft ale and winced. He didn’t, however, see the logic in poisoning the natural order of the body with this junk.
The music wasn’t to his liking either. Anything involving singers in groups really jarred with him. He despised the clash of voices – male or female. A solo singer sat better with him, but no vocalist, and a simple electronic beat was best of all. Chaotic music was cluttered and made him flinch whereas a perfect cadence, fast or slow, soothed him.
The occupants of this bar, of which they were many, didn’t seem to mind the chaos. Around the tables, they clustered in both small and large groups on this raised platform. Despite the cold weather outside, women opted for little clothing; men, at least, had some order by opting for similar attire. Dark jeans, shoes, and buttoned shirts.
On the lower platform, along the bar, students scurried like rats under a stinking alcoholic cloud.
As much as Alan tried to find order in the chaos around him, he knew there was very little. There was no other
way, really, than his way. He pulled his rucksack onto his knee and placed a hand inside. It was up to him to restore order.
The music stopped. Time for the countdown.
Two young women stood behind his table, looking down at him. They both wore low-cut red dresses, and both had long blond hair. They could have been twins. It was a fleeting flash of order. A tease. An attempt, from a source unknown, to prevent the unpreventable …
‘Ten … nine …’
The countdown had begun. Alan didn’t hear the next numbers because one of the pretty women was speaking, ‘Can I see your figurines?’
‘No,’ Alan said.
‘Six …’
She swooped one off the table. Both women started to grin.
‘Four …’
‘Why the bowtie, freak?’
‘Two …’
‘Weirdo! I’m talking to—'
‘Happy New Year!’
Alan shot the woman holding the figurine in her chin, and the lower half of her jaw swung loose.
The music to Auld Lang Syne flared up. Everyone around him, including the woman with the ruined face, started to sing, but the lyrics were different. They didn’t match the music. It was the most extreme, grating example of disorder that Alan had ever experienced.
‘Alan Sants, wets his pants.’
He stood up and shot the other woman point-blank in the forehead. She flew over the banister running alongside the raised platform.
‘Alan Sants, wets his pants.’
He leaned forward and tore the woman-in-red’s jaw from her face.
‘Alan Sants, Alan Sants.’
He shot aimlessly into the crowd around him. People started to fall. No one screamed, they just continued to sing.
‘Alan Sants wets his pants.’
He carried on killing, until he couldn’t see for all the blood and bodies.
‘Alan?’ The Conduit stroked his face. ‘Alan?’
He bought him back gently. He was really starting to love this boy. More so than any who had gone before. Even Christian Severance.
Alan cried, but he smiled too. They weren’t tears of happiness. They were more than that. So much more. They were tears of realisation.
The Conduit led him through to the kitchen and sat him with his back to the dog, who was sleeping. He put a glass of water to his lips and let him drink. ‘Not too fast.’
He took a sip and stopped crying. He looked up. ‘Thank you, Conduit.’
‘Don’t thank me.’
‘I saw how it could be. I saw what could be. Thank you for showing me.’
‘You saw it. You, Alan. I didn’t put it there. You did.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
The Conduit pulled up a chair beside Alan. Alan leaned to his side, so his head rested on the doctor’s lap.
As the doctor stroked his hair, he closed his eyes and sighed. Success came with a cost, and the loss of Alan would be the greatest yet. ‘You’ll burn for eternity, my dear boy.’
‘Thank you, Conduit.’
‘The idea of you, the memory of you, that is the fire that will always burn. I’m so proud of you.’
Alan didn’t respond. He was already asleep on his lap.
The Conduit heard the rattle of a chain, and his dog’s head appeared at his side. He licked the back of Alan’s neck.
The Conduit took his hand from Alan’s hair and stroked his dog’s pitted scalp. ‘Good dog.’
The dog nuzzled his master’s hand.
Yorke was in the fast lane, and well into his journey back to Leeds when he received a call from Rosset. ‘We know who he is, Mike.’
Yorke felt his adrenaline surge.
‘The first two professors checked out just fine,’ Rosset said. ‘The third professor … Dr Alexander Harris … well, this is where it gets interesting. On record, in all the databases, Harris exists just fine. Where he was born in Cumbria, his parents, his education – right up to his employment at the University of Leeds as a Psychology professor. He is also a practising psychiatrist at a clinic near Roundhay. It was his passport photo which gave us an almighty shock.’
‘It was Mayers, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, he’s acquired a fictional identity. Not cheap. But it can be done.’ Yorke thought of the shady syndicate dubbed Article SE by the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit. Its tentacles spread far and wide and tightened around many criminal enterprises throughout the South East of England. They were responsible for Yorke’s experiences earlier this year. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were responsible for knocking together fictional identities for the right fee.
‘What’s his address?’
‘Again fictional. He lives on eighty-two Edgemont Drive. Edgemont Drive stops at 80.’
‘So where does the University and the psychiatry practice send his employment correspondence?’
‘He has a Post Office Box in a Royal Mail sorting office.’
‘Have you been?’
‘Yes, with a warrant. There’s a large build-up of correspondence. He hasn’t been there in a few months, so none of the staff we spoke to can recall him.’
‘What about other mail? Junk mail? Election information? What happens when the postman realises eighty-two doesn’t exist?’
‘Harris redirects all his mail to the PO box. Nobody has any cause to look for the missing house.’
‘But if this house is registered to Harris on the electoral register, he can vote?’
‘Yes. It’s a solid identity as I said.’
‘Your thoughts?’ Yorke said.
‘I’ve got many,’ Rosset said. ‘Where do I start? Other than it begins with a lot of officers. The University of Leeds is about to get a surprise when it’s asked to open its doors for Christmas. We need to pull apart their CCTV and try to get a starting point. We need to speak to all his colleagues, and his students. He’s been coming and going from the University daily. Someone will know something. Your take?’
‘I’m not suggesting you don’t throw a lot at this, sir. But I’m playing devil’s advocate when I say that if we go in hard now, then he may get wind and then we won’t be able to collar him when the university reopens in January.’
‘So, what do we do, Mike, drag our heels and wait for another of Dr Death’s patients to open fire in a confined area?’
Yorke bit his bottom lip and took a deep breath through his nose. Rosset was clearly fired up, and his nerves were worn. Yorke empathised. In fact, after glancing at his speedometer dancing around 90, he realised he was just as charged up.
‘No, sir … I’m just suggesting a more measured approach. We know who he is. So, right now, it feels like we’ve almost got him. That we have one hand on his shoulder. But we don’t. Without knowing where he is, we’re playing with false confidence, and the only thing we can say with any certainty right now is, if he runs again, we know he can change his identity. Then where are we? Back at square one.’
‘I need you here, Mike. You’re part of this team. I want you involved in the game plan.’
‘I’ll be there within an hour.’
It was early evening. Yorke and Gardner were swilling their third pints of northern swamp juice. On another occasion, Yorke would’ve admitted he was starting to enjoy it and, as with all good beers, it just took a while to fully acquire the taste. He was in no mood to discuss beer though, only to drink it.
It took most of the three pints to go through Rosset’s plan of action which, in the early afternoon, had already started firing on all cylinders.
‘And you were there? It doesn’t sound like any plan of action you’d be involved in!’
Yorke swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘It seems the subtle approach is a collection of dirty words up here. The station practically turned into a call centre, and every employee of the university, including the canteen staff, were dragged kicking and screaming from their Christmas celebrations.’
�
�Jesus. Is Rosset not worried about the press getting involved?’
‘They’re trying to gag them as we speak.’
‘That never really went well for us in the past.’
‘On deaf ears, Emma.’
‘Louis Mayers won’t be back.’
‘Again, on deaf ears. They seem to think he’ll walk right back into their hands.’
‘The man is a ghost.’
‘Guess what I’m going to say?’
‘Something involving ears?’ Gardner finished her pint. ‘What about the Lacey Ray situation?’
‘I can’t even begin to imagine the process involved in getting a seven year-old boy in a high-security psychiatric hospital, never mind in front of an infamous serial killer.’
‘I can’t imagine there is one.’
‘Precisely. She was adamant that she wasn’t giving up anything without seeing him.’
‘Is it worth another run at it?
‘Maybe in a couple of days when Rosset’s gung ho approach crashes and burns.’
‘You look knackered, Mike.’
‘Yep. At least I got to see Patricia last night. These round trips around England are a nightmare. It doesn’t help that it’s here. I never thought I’d get to this neck of the woods again. A lot of bad memories here.’ And good ones, he thought, depending on which way you look at it.
‘Because of your best friend, Brandon. The one that died?’
‘Among other things.’ He finished his pint. ‘I think we should head to bed now, Emma, the bar is calling me, and with what we’ve got on, I don’t think that’d be such a good idea.’
‘Mike, after our last conversation here, I did some research on the internet. I know what happened to you while you were at university … I’m sorry.’
Yorke took a deep breath. He wasn’t at all surprised. He’d given a lot away in the last conversation. She was ex-police after all, and she wouldn’t have gone to sleep on a mystery like that.
‘Are you angry with me?’
‘No. I’d have done the same. I’m at fault for drinking too much and letting too much go.’
‘Why are you at fault, Mike? Why’s it so wrong for you to talk about these things? You did nothing wrong.’
