The next day the papers were plastered with images of Joel that weren’t quite real, but close enough to identify him. There was also a smaller one of Robin, after the motorway pile-up. She’d almost forgotten how badly he’d been hurt; his face a mass of scarred ridges, flesh cobbled together over a patchwork of splintered bone. Well, he wouldn’t be recognised from that, now. His unblemished skin was soft with fine golden hairs, his frame a dense perfection of muscle tone. Gone were the deep and ragged scars that had twisted his cheek and puckered his mouth. But the most noticeable change were the eyes, no longer pale grey, but hazel, flashing with fiery glints. But whatever he looked like, she loved him, and despaired that they would be allowed to have any kind of future.
Chapter 49
As it turned out, Jim didn’t have to go to the hospital. The ward Sister turned up at the station on her way to work, and was shown into Redwall’s office. ‘That picture,’ she said. ‘The one in the paper? Well, it looks like Joel Waterman. I’m not sure, because there’s something a little different… I don’t want to be getting the guy into trouble, he’s a great asset to A & E, and I can’t believe all that stuff the paper has written about him. But it’s strange that he’s gone missing, along with Sarah.’
Inspector Redwall tried to hide his shock at the name, but afterwards told Jim, ‘Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I said it was a composite, and she showed me a photocopy of his driving licence. He was right under our noses all the time; a porter at the hospital. Sarah took her breaks with him sometimes. Felt sorry for him, she thinks.’
‘A porter at the same hospital? Damn.’
‘The Sister didn’t say they were relatives. In fact, she was quite positive they weren’t, otherwise Sarah would have mentioned it.’
‘Would she? If she was living under an assumed name? Have we got his address?’
‘He has a room in the hostel on site, but usually went away at weekends. There is an address logged in the system, a place called Wood Hall, in Gloucester.’
‘Did you check out his digs at the hospital?’
‘Of course. But it’s got nothing personal in it. A TV. No books, just a few clothes, as though he was camping out.’
‘Well, if he’s called Waterman, he must be some kind of relation to the professor. But what? Grandson, maybe. We didn’t find any evidence that the Prof had any children, though.’
‘We weren’t looking for it,’ Redwall said. ‘So, perhaps you could get someone onto that? But she also said he was a big guy, strong. Would do anything he was told. Everyone liked him, even though he was a bit slow. Actually, I get the impression he was retarded; they’re not allowed to say that these days. Can this be the same guy who tortured Freman and strangled a prostitute?’
‘Being slow wouldn’t stop him from killing, if he was that way inclined.’
‘Maybe. Who knows?’
Redwall grimaced. ‘Ok, here’s a scenario. He’s mentally retarded, but he’s a guy. He had a thing for Sarah, but if she is his sister, he understands that she’s taboo. So, he goes after prostitutes that look like her. Firstly, to get his end away, and secondly, to kill them because he’s angry at Sarah for some reason.’
‘So, we thought she was in danger because she was his targeted type, but really, all the others were substitutes for her?’
Redwall’s brows raised. ‘Does it compute?’
‘It computes big time that Sarah’s disappeared, and so has Joel. Her fingerprints were found in the cell where Freman was found. We didn’t know whether she was under duress, or involved, but it sounds as if Freman freed her.’
‘Blood is thicker than water. She might still be protecting Joel.’
‘If they’re related.’
‘And Freman, the idiot, somehow discovered that Joel was the Strangler, and went there without telling us…’
‘But how does Robin fit into this?’
‘Robin was seeing Sarah. If Joel found out about the relationship, and is jealous, Robin’s life isn’t worth tuppence.’
Jim added, ‘Which would account for them scarpering, then that call from Sarah saying they hadn’t done anything wrong. And Robin did phone to warn Freman...’
‘So, where is Joel? I got the feeling we just missed him at Wood Hall.’
‘Well, get an all-out manhunt going for all of them, singly or in whichever combination.’ Redwall said. ‘They’re pretty noticeable, especially Joel, because of his size. I haven’t a clue who did what, but we’ve got a series of murders and some pretty clear suspects. We need to get them all into custody, urgently, before anyone else turns up dead. If Robin and Sarah have some excuses – and they’d have to be damn good ones – they can tell us when they’re behind bars. Get going. Now!
Chapter 50
After a meal that had been knocked together out of cans, Joel announced, ‘Sarah, I’m taking Robin out for a drive this evening. I want you to wait here.’
Joel had been in a strangely energised mood, which bothered Robin more than his usual bland superiority, but it was Sarah whose voice rose in alarm.
‘Papa, no! You’re not taking him anywhere. If you do that, I promise, I’ll call the police.’
‘I promise I won’t kill him,’ her father said, placing his hand over his heart.
‘You promise?’ she spat. ‘What kind of a fool do you think I am?’
‘OK, calm down, my little spitfire. Robin and I will stay in the kitchen and talk. How about you go and make the fire up and sit down with a nice book.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, you can sit and do nothing if you want. I don’t suppose you know how to embroider? It’s what women used to do once upon a time, to while away those long boring nights without TV. To think I was brought up in an era when there was no TV, no internet, no mobiles, and no phones – unless you were rich. Which my father was, of course. I’m enjoying this new era so very, very much. Off you go, then.’
Sarah’s words exploded from her. ‘Like hell I will!’
‘Sarah?’ Robin said. ‘Please? It’s OK.’
He didn’t know what Joel wanted, and it wasn’t OK, but there was no point making him lose his temper. With an angry glare, she flounced out and slammed the door behind her. After a moment, he heard things crashing about in the fireplace.
Joel said, admiringly, sitting back down at the table. ‘She was such a demure child. I really didn’t think she had it in her.’
‘What do you want to talk to me about?’
‘So impatient. It’s about Sarah, basically. She believes she loves you, and if I dispense with you, I have a feeling I’d have to dispense with her, too. I think you might both be more useful alive than dead. So, you have a reprieve.’
‘Thank you,’ Robin said, politely.
‘Now, I know you intend to abscond at the first opportunity, so I’ve been trying to find a way to make sure that doesn’t happen.’
‘And have you?’
‘I believe so. I’m going to teach you what it means to be an angel.’ His brow lifted at Robin’s scathing look. ‘Oh, I read the stories Freman wrote. He didn’t quite get it right, but we’re definitely a new breed, us three. We need to think of a name for ourselves. Dark Angels. Soul Catchers. No, they’re not catchy enough. Something strong, vampiric. Come up with something for me.’
‘Arsouls?’
‘Very amusing.’
‘What’s all this about? We’re just killing time. This is all something about nothing. What’s really going on?’
‘I just needed Sarah out of the room. I don’t want to have to fight her and you. We’re going out, and she’s staying here.’
Robin shot to his feet, his chair crashing back, but Joel was quicker. He had his back to the door, hand out.
‘Don’t be stupid. You’ll only hurt yourself – and Sarah.’
Robin almost challenged him, but Joel had had a half a lifetime of being slightly more than human, and Robin was still recovering the strength he’d once ha
d. Half a head taller, and many times stronger, Joel watched, and waited, a slight smile on his lips. As Robin hesitated, then stilled, he pulled out a zip tie, and dangled it enticingly.
‘Just so you don’t do anything daft. Now, come to daddy and turn around. I promised I didn’t intend to kill you, and I meant it. If you make a fuss, I might change my mind.’
Robin wondered how words said in such a languid, drawling tone could be so menacing. He turned and let Joel secure his wrists, knowing that if he resisted, the end result would be the same. He was furious at his own weakness, and for letting Sarah down.
‘Now, sit down and don’t interfere. I’m not going to hurt her.’
Joel left the door open as he went to Sarah, and lifted her bodily from a chair, and over his shoulder.
‘Beddy-byes time, my sweet,’ Joel said, lifting her like a child, to carry her upstairs over his shoulder.
Robin heard her screaming abuse all the way up the stairs. She was calling his name, half-sobbing, as Joel came back down alone.
‘I promise, Sarah will be fine, though, she doesn’t believe me. The quicker we get this over with, the better.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see,’ Joel said.
In the back seat of the big car, seatbelt fastened, Robin was a puppet to Joel’s whim. He found it far worse than being immobilised in hospital, because even in the depths of despair, he knew people were trying to help him. He had no idea what Joel’s intention was, but it was unlikely to be for the good of anyone except himself.
They backed down the rutted drive, and took off towards Stockport. After a while the streets of houses merged into a continuous blur of tall, shining buildings. Then Joel gravitated towards a seedy area where a playing field ran alongside a boarded-up factory, and parked the big car beside a concrete bridge, beneath which black water ran silently. There, he leaned back and slapped a plaster over Robin’s mouth, with a smile.
‘Don’t want you spoiling the fun,’ he said. ‘Just sit still, and enjoy the show.’
As if Joel had some kind of inner radar, sure enough, after a while, a woman approached the car. Joel wound the window down a little. She leaned down, and asked what Joel wanted, then noticed Robin in the back, and scarpered, survival instinct cutting in. The next one wasn’t so careful. Joel flashed some banknotes, and said, ‘Get in.’
She walked around, climbed in, and shut the door before seeing Robin fighting silently in the back, trying to warn her. She immediately panicked and reached for the handle, but it was too late.
Joel pulled her towards him. ‘Shh,’ he hushed, grabbing her hair, pulling her head down, and unzipping. ‘It’s just trade as usual.’
Robin closed his eyes and had to listen to Joel get a blow job. One of the things he hadn’t realised about his own body, was just how heightened all his senses had become. He couldn’t block the sounds, and was disgusted by his enforced voyeurism. At Joel’s sigh of completion, he wondered if that was what this had all been about. Just humiliation.
‘Robin, open your eyes, the fun is just starting.’
Joel’s words were a command that made his eyes blink open. Joel’s hands closed around the woman’s throat and squeezed. He could have killed her more quickly, snapped her neck, but Robin had the feeling he was getting a thrill out of making it last. They were a still tableau – Joel with his hands encasing her neck, hers clawing at his forearms, as her face gradually suffused with blood, her eyes with knowledge.
Robin fought until the zip ties drew blood, then tears streamed down his face as she became still.
‘She’s not dead, yet,’ Joel assured him, bright with anticipation. ‘You’ll know when. Keep watching.’
For a moment, all was still. Then something zapped into Robin’s body like an electric shock, growing in intensity until it seemed as if his blood was boiling into the tips of his fingers. He arched back, a deep groan issuing through his nose. The pain was gradually replaced by a consuming ecstasy of such intensity it was almost pain. Then, gradually the euphoria trickled from his limbs, leaving him weak with shock, yet, in some way, an amplified version of his previous self. He felt rejuvenated, alive, pulsing with energy.
When his head cleared, Joel was watching him, disappointment tinged with a hint of amusement. He had shoved the dead whore against the door. ‘Well, well. I didn’t expect that. You’ve been initiated. Welcome to the club.’
Joel climbed out, walked around, the car, and yanked the whore unceremoniously onto the dirty pavement. He opened the back door, and cut the zip tie from Robin’s wrists. Robin ripped the plaster from his mouth. He wanted to be sick.
‘You might as well get in the front,’ Joel said, shoving the woman’s purse at him, ‘and see if there’s any cash in there. We could do with it.’
Robin stared at the purse for a second, then threw it from him with involuntary disgust, before undoing the seat belt and slipping out. Then he was running. Joel’s voice shouted after him, echoing over the dark water.
‘Robin, come back. Don’t be stupid. You’re one of us, now!’
Robin heard Joel start the car, but he belted through a gate, across the playing field, and into a maze of walkways leading to a housing estate. Here, almost surprised to find himself alone, he slid down against a brick wall, hugging his knees to stop himself shaking. He closed his eyes, and shook his head, but the memory of that euphoria, which had been more intense than any orgasm, lingered on like the aftermath of a recreational drug, making him drowsy, but also enervated. He was horrified, but accepted that his prime emotion had been that of pleasure. He had enjoyed the whore’s death.
How differently they had coped, Sarah, and Joel. The one, allowing herself to be the recipient of this gift for a short while, the other killing to take what wasn’t truly his. But would he become like Sarah or Joel? If the whore was with him, now, in him, how would he tell her it was OK to drift on, when he didn’t know that it was?
A couple passed him warily, casting anxious glances. He stood shakily, and began to walk. It wouldn’t surprise him if they called the cops. And that was the moment he realised exactly what Joel had done. Robin recalled catching the purse before casting it away as if burnt, but it had been no accident. If the purse hadn’t been stolen by the time the cops got there, his fingerprints would be on it. Joel hadn’t meant him to be the recipient of the whore’s soul, he’d simply wanted him to watch.
But he had meant for Robin to take the fall for the murder. He was making sure Robin didn’t go to the police.
Chapter 51
While running her errands, Sarah had been collecting sleeping tablets. She hadn’t been able to buy a substantial quantity without a prescription, but discovered that most pharmacists could be wheedled out of a few with her sob story of having run from an abusive relationship, and not yet signed on with a doctor. It was surprising how many chemists there were around. She had planned to lace Joel’s tea, to give her and Robin the opportunity to slip away. Sometimes the simple option worked. Except that she’d left it too late. Had Joel somehow guessed?
Joel had taken Robin.
She imagined the worst. She screamed their names, but heard the car doors slam, and silence echoed back. She howled for her loss, and fought like a demon, ripping her skin raw against the zip-ties.
When she stopped fighting, tears leaked silently. Joel intended to kill Robin and dump his body; get rid of the problem she had created. If he hoped the two of them were going to live in some kind of strange relationship, he was off his head. She would kill him, or more likely, die trying. Was Robin now an echo, trapped inside Joel’s mind?
The last few days had been too frightening, too sudden in their reversal, for reflective thinking, but presently there was nothing else she could do. Comprehension hit her savagely.
It hadn’t occurred to her until now that it wasn’t just her father’s soul inhabiting Joel’s body, but his whole persona: his psyche, ethics, and memories, right up to the time of his
death. She’d assumed that when people died, the soul that left the body was a spark, a life force that left human consciousness behind, but it wasn’t so simple. If everyone who died took their life’s memories with them, where were they headed with them? Surely, after all, if there was a life after this one, then life had to be more than an inadvertent meeting of cells in the cosmos? And what if the souls trapped within Joel’s mind remembered, too? Were they aware of being imprisoned at the whim of a psychopath? Or was it simply too big to comprehend that they were dead, and still sentient?
She thought of the child, Rachel, whose mother had attacked her, knowing what she’d seen. And Sarah had been obliged to say she was mad; poor woman. Mad with grief, and was surely no longer quite sane. And Rachel, was she still here? Was there any way of knowing?
Was there enough space in a single mind to cope with more than one lifetime of human experience? But then, look how much knowledge could be trapped in a computer. It would have been unimaginable when she was a child. Even more unimaginable to her father, a privileged child born in the nineteen thirties, a time of such great social upheaval it could have scarcely been imagined.
‘Are you here, Rachel,’ she said softly. ‘Are you still with me, after all?’
If she was, she remained silent.
When Sarah shut the professor away in the cell all those years ago, she had meant to feed him, she hadn’t thought any further than taking control of their lives, but then she’d been afraid to open the door. Even as an old man, he might well have overpowered her. She sensed murder in him, and if he didn’t die, his prime goal would be revenge. Over the days, gradually her resolve had hardened. She never went near the cell again, and months later, she’d burnt his papers, and closed the secret door, allowing dust to settle, disguising any trace of his lab. Her crime brought bile to her throat time and time again. But she’d mostly done it for Joel, a child who could not protect himself, and she would do the same thing again. It hadn’t been a choice, but a necessity.
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