by Caro Ramsay
‘No, we can’t!’
‘Yes, we can. Come on, it’ll be great.’
‘No way!’ But the girl was laughing and letting him pull her along, her head back, face up to the sky, letting the rain drizzle down her face, dragging her make-up with it.
The lightning flashed again, and momentarily the world turned black and white, showing up her white skin and panda eyes.
‘You look like Alice Cooper.’ He laughed, one hand dragging her, the other round her shoulders, guiding her along. She held her skirt down against the wind, her knees knocking together as her high heels clipped unsteadily along the cobbles of Whistler’s Lane.
‘Here! In here.’ They ran up the lane, the girl stumbling as her stiletto caught on a cobble, and turned into the yard of the supermarket, where they were sheltered from the worst of the wind. The rancid smell of decay, rotting veg and sour milk, hung heavy in the air, making their stomachs churn. But beyond that lay a stack of pallets under a tent of tarpaulin.
‘We can have this place to ourselves,’ he said, pulling out a pile of flattened cardboard boxes waiting to be bound.
She was holding her nose. ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this; that smell is disgusting.’ She wound her hair over her face, then round her neck in mock strangulation, her coat hanging open, the way she pulled her arms pushing her breasts together. She couldn’t stop laughing.
The boy advanced, his hands wriggling. ‘And where are the r-r-rats, my dear?’ he questioned her in his best Vincent Price accent.
She shrieked, playing her part. ‘My dear sir! What would you want with a maiden like me?’ She held the back of her hand to her forehead, her chest heaving in the best Hammer House of Horror tradition.
The wriggling fingers came closer. ‘Rats, my dear! Rats, and more rats! Don’t worry, I’m here to protect you,’ said Peter Cushing, putting his arm round her. She nestled into his neck, eyes wide, as with his other hand he pulled the tarpaulin free. ‘Look out for the rats! They could come creeping up your leg and under your – ’
She started screaming. A moment later, so did he.
Rain, rain and more rain, it was bloody everywhere. He could hardly see the convolutions of the road in front of him. The rear end of Helena’s Five Series seemed to have problems gripping the road, and McAlpine sobered up more quickly than he would have thought physiologically possible. Then he realized it was the strength of the wind catching the car side-on as the isolated road was exposed on the contour line of the hill. He drove on past the dunes, past the links at Turnberry. The Golf Club and the hotel had disappeared behind him into the whirl of wind and rain. Pushing his foot down, he turned up the road to Culzean, Croy, the Electric Brae and then to the Heads of Ayr. He concentrated, fighting sleep, fighting drink, fighting nausea, as the car jerked sideways with every gust of the gale. The windscreen wipers danced madly, barely clearing the water from the glass. He drove, fingers gripped on the leather wheel, eyes straining as the road, the clouds and the sea merged, water coming at the car like some breathless animal desperate to get in.
It was as dark as he had ever seen. He leaned forward, wiping the inside of the windscreen with the back of his hand. The car’s back end shuddered violently, and he pulled on the steering wheel, the road suddenly twisting and rising. The battering of water on the windscreen came and went as the car turned headlong into the wind, rain coming at the glass by the bucketful.
He was fully awake now, and he could not ignore the bile rising in his throat. Bright diamonds of water danced in front of him: now you see them, now you don’t. Desperate for fresh air, he reached for the button to open his window, but his fingers couldn’t find it. He glanced at the dashboard display; the speedo was reading seventy. He flicked the switch for the passenger window, and it hummed open two inches, then jammed. The CD player burst into life; he’d pressed the wrong button, and Orff filled the car. Carmina Burana, Helena’s favourite. Soundtrack from The Omen to him. He smiled to himself, wiped the inside of the windscreen again, making the shape of a smile with the back of his hand, and started to laugh. He pushed the car up to the next corner, braking at the last minute, the sliding rear end gaining momentum as it rounded the bend. He dotted a couple of eyes over the smile in the condensation. The car over-straightened, and the engine shrieked as it aquaplaned, fighting the weight as the back of the car started to slide. He over-corrected, the front whiplashed round quicker than his reflex response, and the car began to spin like a waltzer into the darkness.
Helena pulled a pristine sheet of Ingres 47 from its pad and pinned it on to her board, smoothing her fingers over it, comforted by its familiar grain. She watched the chiaroscuro shadows of her hand as the lightning flashed through the Velux. Two bright flashes – she blinked – then it passed. Only the stair light remained, highlighting the shadows in the room. If she hadn’t lived here all her life and known the house to be a kind one, she would have shivered at her ghostly thoughts. The power of the storm invigorated her, just as it had invigorated Mary Shelley, whose Dr Frankenstein had created his monster on such a night as this. She must create too, from the heart, something ethereal, instinctual, primal. Something to suit the moment. She lifted the bottle again, took a good mouthful, swilling the Merlot round her mouth. She watched for the lightning, counting a hundred and one, a hundred and two, until the thunder, and then she swallowed. It was getting closer. She toyed with the idea of opening the windows and letting the rain in, but she wasn’t as drunk as that.
She put the bottle down and picked up her small box of pastels, all her favourites; some were beyond use, no pigment left under the paper, but she could never bring herself to dump them. She began to draw nothing in particular, just instinct, chalk against paper, and felt the tension flow from her. She was drawing a man, broad shouldered, slim hipped, walking in fine rain along a path. The path wound its way among trees. She added a jacket and put his hood up, clouding his face in darkness. She took the side of her thumb and narrowed his shoulders. She knew this man. And these were not small trees. She crossed their trunks, not trees at all. She knew this scene … she was painting from memory … there was a flash of lightning, the room brightened, and for a moment she thought the house was screaming, then realized it was the phone. She swore, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her watch said four o’clock. No matter what Alan had to say, she wasn’t having any of it.
‘Yip’, she said curtly.
‘Hello? Helena?’ The voice was uncertain.
She shook her head clear of Merlot. ‘Is that you, Colin?’
‘Yes.’
‘You sound as though you’re out on the high seas?’
‘Is the Boss there?’ Anderson was quietly insistent.
‘No,’ she answered curtly. ‘He isn’t.’ She put the phone down. ‘Bastard!’
She looked at the picture: a lonely man, not much more than a boy, walking up a path surrounded by graves, a stick in his hand. No, she could see it clearly now, not a stick, a single rose. A single red rose, for …
She leaned against the wall, staring at the picture, tormenting herself, thinking how small he seemed, how vulnerable.
That was one memory too much for her. ‘You’ve never really been mine, have you, Alan?’ she said to herself, and sleepily slid down the wall, still looking at the pastel, her own creation – her own monster – mocking her. ‘Never been mine.’
McAlpine felt a knife being slowly inserted into his eyeball and twisted to the left. Then to the right. It settled into a rhythm, pain skewering this way and that. Pain was the only thing he was aware of.
He breathed out, recognizing the smell of vomit. He tried to open his eyes, but they were locked tight with a crust that he didn’t have the energy to break. He tried to move his head, but the pain suddenly intensified. He thought better of it and kept still.
As consciousness slipped away, he realized his head was resting on the steering wheel, his face being rearranged by the pressure of leather on broken bone. He
could taste the blood in his mouth. There was a tooth lying on his tongue.
He tried to spit it out.
He passed out instead.
McAlpine woke again. This time he was aware of urgency; this time he could smell vomit and blood, and whisky, and something heady. Perfume? Petrol. He heard a gentle drip – then another – getting steadily louder. He felt himself slide back into unconsciousness, trying to ignore that little voice urging him to stay awake.
The smell of petrol feasted on the lining of his nostrils. The stench was getting stronger, the drips steadily bigger and louder. The petrol was meandering around the engine of the car, gathering, forming a puddle, which formed a stream that ran along the outer metalwork of the car body. It snaked towards the live wire of the alarm that sparked and twitched against its metal casing.
The effort of thinking hurt. He was dreaming. Of Anna. Of petrol. Anna and then … petrol.
The switch in his brain flicked to survival. His eyes opened.
He was awake, in a strange half-life of non-sleep, but his body was refusing to cooperate. He was thinking through mist. It was every nightmare he had ever had: he was falling and could not stop, he could not run, he could not escape to where Anna was calling, and he could not answer. He couldn’t get out. And all the time, he knew, the smell of petrol was getting stronger. His eyes failed to focus on a dark shadow that passed over the front windscreen. He thought he heard somebody trying to open the door, thought he heard somebody climb on to the bonnet. He felt the car shudder. Was that the wind? Or salvation?
The smell of petrol was burning his throat. He tried to reach the central locking switch, but his arm would not move. He felt bone grind on bloody bone, and was sick.
He didn’t hear the knuckles knocking hard on the window, nor the stick hitting against the door. He woke with a start as something hooded and dark landed monkey-like on the bonnet of the car, lifted winged arms and brought a stick down hard on the windscreen, and he closed his eyes as glass and water rained down on him, again and again. As the creature stretched and turned, as it raised the stick yet again, the hood fell from her head and her face was lit by a sliver of lightning.
It nearly stopped his heart.
Salvation.
Arlene lay, as both the others had, flat on her back, her green boots crossed at the ankles, arms outstretched, palms up, as if crucified. Her head was turned to one side, her face looking out of the gap in the wall of the tent as if she was checking the progress of the storm. The police had erected a polythene cover over her to protect the scene till the SOCOs had finished. Her face lay in the path of the rain that entered the gap, peppering her skin and darkening her peroxide hair.
Outside the tent, Anderson’s jacket was getting wet; rain trickled under his collar and down his back, but his head was dry, stuck as it was through the gap, viewing the scene but ignoring the lump of intestine that glimmered on the cardboard beside the body.
Mulholland had been the first to arrive, summoned by text from the nearby casino. He was kneeling beside her, scribbling in his notebook. He was wearing polythene slips over his immaculate shoes, his knees protected by another piece of plastic. Every time he moved, he squeaked.
He reached over to turn her head towards him and said queasily, ‘There’s nothing of her face left round this side. Looks like someone kicked her. Hard.’
‘That’s a change from the norm,’ said Anderson, too tired to think about its significance.
‘Any luck finding the Boss?’ Mulholland asked without looking up.
‘No, not yet.’
‘Probably lying pissed as a fart somewhere.’
Anderson didn’t dignify that with an answer.
‘She was a prostitute. Known as Arlene, among other names. Well known in the area,’ said Mulholland, still on his knees, peering at her neck. ‘Do you think her neck’s broken? Her head wobbles about a lot.’ He gently pushed her chin with his gloved fingertip. Arlene looked upward momentarily, then turned back to the gap in the tent.
‘Don’t do that, Vik. Was she a big-time pro?’
‘More hooking than a Loch Fyne fisherman, according to Littlewood. She used to be a stripper in her young days, before she had her kid. She did things with a banana that would make your mouth water. Or your eyes, depending on your point of view.’
‘If Littlewood knows her from vice, she’ll be on file. Cavalry’s arrived.’ Anderson stood to one side to let O’Hare in.
‘Either this is too early in the morning or I’m getting old.’ O’Hare shook the rain from his hair, careful not to let it spatter the body at his feet. ‘Right, so what’s pulled me from my bed at this ungodly hour … again?’ he asked, unnecessarily.
Anderson answered. ‘Female, late twenties. Mulholland thinks she might have a broken neck.’
O’Hare looked at the bloodied viscera, congealing slowly. ‘I would guess at a more obvious cause of death.’
‘He meant broken neck … as well as a change from … I feel sick,’ said Anderson.
‘I know what you mean, DI Anderson. Go out and take a breath of fresh air.’
‘That skip stinks, the air’s better in here.’
Costello stuck her head into the tent. ‘Yeah, it’s Vik Mulholland’s aftershave. Kills 99 per cent of all known germs and confuses the rest. Hello, Doc. Col? The two that found the body, they’re just a couple of kids. He’s as white as a sheet; she’s in the back of the panda crying her eyes out. They came up here for a quick shag.’
‘Beside the rubbish skip?’ said O’Hare. ‘And they say romance is dead.’
‘Can’t snog in Ashton Lane now with the smoking ban, it’s too busy. So they came up here to Whistler’s Lane instead. Two policemen walked past. That’s four people in the locus, so what do you want me to do?’
‘What time was this?’ asked Anderson, holding his stomach.
‘Must have been only minutes before the body was discovered. Once all this is over, I’ll organize a run-through for better timing,’ said Costello. ‘Do you have a time of death?’
Four sets of eyes looked at O’Hare. He shrugged. ‘I’ll take her temp now.’
‘Check out the policemen. They must be on the current night shift.’
‘I’ve been in touch with the station. Just waiting for them to phone back.’ Typical Costello, she had already done it. ‘Is the Boss here?’ she asked.
‘Not yet,’ replied Anderson. ‘What about the boy? Did he see anything?’
‘The Goth? No, he was thinking with his dick. OK for Wyngate to take them back to the station? And can they have Mulholland to help do the taxi queue before it dwindles away? I really want to see him get that suit wet.’
Anderson nodded. She would have done it anyway. He heard Costello’s ringtone shrill from her pocket. She withdrew from the tent to answer it.
The pattering of rain on the tight plastic roof was quieter now as the storm passed, and they could hear Costello’s voice and others talking outside. The tent started pulsing with yellow light, heralding the arrival of another panda.
O’Hare went through the motions of looking for a pulse, making a cursory examination of the body. He touched the forehead with the fingertips of his gloved hands, flicked a strand of blonde hair from lifeless eyes.
Costello’s head came back through the gap. ‘A witness on the street saw her talking to someone. “A man in an anorak with a hat on” was as good as we got description-wise. Didn’t hear the conversation, but thought the guy was Irish.’
‘Good,’ said Anderson, surprised at the relief he felt. Something at last. ‘Take Mulholland, and keep everybody at the station until they sober up; make sure there’ve plenty of hot coffee and towels. Before you go, Costello, get that skip picked up, lock, stock and barrel, get it taken to Stewart Street or Pitt Street, or let the Keystone Kops have a look. All you want is a garage out of the rain. Let the uniforms loose on it, they’ll enjoy it.’
‘I’ll pull that tarp over it for now; stop any more r
ain getting in. Vik can climb in and give me a hand.’ Costello left, and Mulholland followed her reluctantly, cursing her behind her back.
The pathologist took a dictating machine from his pocket. For a long time he said nothing, reading Arlene before speaking.
‘Note the position of the limbs, the burn marks around the mouth.’ He pointed to what was left of her face with his finger. ‘All the actual wounds are made with a weapon similar, if not identical, to that used on Fulton and Traill, but inflicted with greater ferocity.’ He prodded the bloodied mass of her lower abdomen with a rubberized finger. ‘Jesus!’ he swore quietly, as the intestine slipped with a syrupy sound on to the gravel with her stomach, leaving a smear of mucus and blood. ‘He’s gone right through the mesentery. Whether he meant to is another thing.’
Anderson felt the acid rise in his throat and just made it out of the tent before the contents of his own stomach contaminated the scene.
‘Look,’ O’Hare went on, ‘she was killed an hour or so before she was found. Somebody has been walking about covered in blood; there’s no way he walked away from this one with his hands clean. And get that profiler down here, show him what he’s missing. Are you OK, Colin?’
‘Not really.’ Anderson put the back of his hand to his mouth, feeling his eyes water.
O’Hare pointed at the injuries on the face again, taking a paper rule from the photographer and holding it against the marks as the camera flashed and buzzed.
‘Mulholland thought he’d kicked her in the face,’ Anderson contributed.
‘I don’t think so,’ said O’Hare. ‘I’d say he jumped on it.’
Alan McAlpine had been sick again. Twice. The first time he barely made it to the toilet before throwing up a mixture of blood and bile into the pristine white bowl. He sat on the side of the bath, resting his arms on the sink, building up his strength before he looked in the mirror. It was a woman’s bathroom, he could tell that from the lotions and potions on the window ledge. The plastic basin for the false teeth made him retch again. He looked in the small round mirror. He had a bad cut down the side of his face, and a bruise was forming on the left side of his lower jaw. His tongue delicately probed the gaping hole as his brain suddenly registered that a tooth was missing, and the side of his face began to throb. He soaked a small white towel with cold water and pressed it to his cheekbone. It seemed to help.
