The Girl in the Empty Room

by Neil Randall

  “Like I said to the lady on the helpline, I was out with my sister. We try and get together every other week, have a meal, stuff like that. On the twenty-ninth we went to an art exhibition in Norwich, got an early train, made a day of it, had a long boozy lunch. These are her contact details. She’ll only be too happy to confirm everything I’ve just said.”

  ***

  “And why did you use your real name on the dating website?” asked Hepworth. “Isn’t that a bit risky, with you being a married man?”

  Jonathan Reynolds shrugged and pulled a sour, surly face.

  “My wife and I have an arrangement,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “An open relationship? She’s aware of your extra-marital activities but turns a blind eye, is that what you mean?”

  “Not exactly,” said Reynolds. “My wife suffers from a rare skin condition. As a result, she’s come to abhor all forms of physical and sexual contact. Therefore, she doesn’t question me if I come home late at night, or if I don’t come home at all.”

  “A kind of unspoken agreement? Okay. I understand.” Hepworth picked up a sheet of paper, a print-out of the message Reynolds had sent Jacqueline via the dating website. “In this message, Mr Reynolds, you make pointed threats against Miss Franklin. What were you –?”

  “Look, Detective Inspector. I was furious when I wrote that message. I was sure she’d done it on purpose, you see, that she’d knowingly infected me with a sexual disease.”

  “On purpose?” said Hepworth, affecting surprise. “How’d you mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It was just some of the things she said and did.”

  Hepworth placed the sheet of paper back on the desk.

  “And where were you on the twenty-ninth of October between the time of half past eight in the morning, and three o’clock in the afternoon?”

  “Erm, if memory serves me right, I was at home all day, on my own, catching up on some paperwork. I sometimes work from home, tend to get more done that way.”

  “And can your wife verify this?”

  “No she can’t, I’m afraid. She was in London, visiting a specialist dermatologist, took the train down, wasn’t back until late that evening.”

  ***

  “Dan,” said Priestly, having just shown Nicky Thomas out of the interview room, “I just got a message from Jenkins.” Looking at her phone, she relayed the following: “Been checking Miss Franklin’s bank records. Apparently, a cash payment of ten thousand pounds was deposited into her account on the twenty-ninth of October, the day she disappeared.”

  “Ten thousand pounds? Who from?”

  “That’s just it – from, apparently, some off-shore account in the Bahamas, hard to trace, like one of those tax haven jobs.”

  “What? Why would a single mum living in a small coastal town receive a payment like that from the Bahamas?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Good morning, Mr Brandon.” Dr Mitchell gestured for the nervous-looking young man to take the visitor’s chair. “What can we do for you today?”

  “Erm, well” – he hesitated and bit into his bottom lip – “it’s a bit embarrassing. And I’ve, erm…been putting off coming to see you.”

  “Okay. I see. But, please, don’t feel embarrassed. I’ve been a general practitioner for over thirty-five years. There’s nothing I haven’t seen in my time, young man, believe me.”

  Brandon gulped back some saliva.

  “Well, a couple of weeks back I met this girl in town. We, erm…got a bit drunk, went back to hers, and slept together. Next morning, well, not next morning exactly, but like a few days later, I noticed this redness, like a rash on my, erm…my penis. At first, I didn’t think nothing of it, ’cause every time I had a shower it disappeared, and I didn’t see it again for days. But over time it’s just got worse and worse, and I – I felt so ashamed. And now I think I might’ve left it too late.”

  “Okay, Mr Brandon, don’t upset yourself. From what you’ve just told me, it sounds like you’ll need to undergo a full sexual health check, have swabs, blood and urine samples taken. Unfortunately, we don’t do that from this surgery, so you’ll have to refer yourself to the G.U.M. unit at Norfolk and Norwich hospital, you’ll have to ring up and make an appointment.” He scribbled a phone number down on a piece of paper, ripped it off and handed it to the patient. “They’ll do all the relevant tests, find out if you’re suffering from an infection, and if necessary, propose a course of treatment.”

  “But how long will that take?”

  “A few days, Mr Brandon, a week at the most.”

  “But don’t think I can wait that long. My – My…it looks bad today. It’s gone all black.”

  “Black!” said Mitchell. “You mean to say your genital region is now black?”

  “Yeah, and this stuff is kinda oozing out of it.”

  Brow furrowed, Mitchell slowly got to his feet.

  “Okay, Mr Brandon, if you could step over to the treatment table, climb up, pull your trousers and underwear down below the knees, I’ll take a look.”

  While Brandon did as instructed, Mitchell walked over to the sink, squeezed some antiseptic hand-wash onto his hands, ran them under a tap, dried off on a paper towel, and then pulled on some surgical gloves.

  “Right, Mr Brandon,” he said, approaching the treatment table, “I’m sure this is nothing to worry a…My God!” He stopped in his tracks. The much younger man’s entire genital region – the penis, scrotum, all the way down towards the perineum – had turned black, like a nightmarish bruise, with an oily-looking substance leaking from the skin. “I – I…”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Two Days Earlier: The Saturday Afternoon

  Aaron looked over the camp – the two caravans, pigpen, wooden outbuildings, phone box, army of black and white gnomes, and two stuffed crocodiles – all the weird, bizarre things he’d prepared himself for. Only now he was here, where the Boge lived, he didn’t know what to do next. It wasn’t like walking up to someone’s house and knocking on a door or ringing a doorbell. But that was the only thing he could think of doing – knocking and waiting.

  Before he could a caravan door swung open, and out rushed Bogdanovic – wild-haired, wild-eyed, in a tatty vest held together with safety pins and camouflage trousers tucked into army boots.

  “Ah, so you’ve finally come.” He took Aaron’s arm and sniffed him through his bomber jacket, from the wrist all the way up to the elbow. “You’re sick, my young friend. You suffer from maladies, both physical and spiritual. This is why you have sought me out, no?”

  Unnerved, frightened – Bogdanovic was such a strange, intimidating figure – Aaron gabbled, “No, no, I’m a, erm…friend of –”

  “Jacqueline’s, of course.” He released Aaron’s arm. “This I know. I can smell her on you.”

  “Smell her on me? But I haven’t seen her since last night. I’ve had a shower and –”

  “It matters not,” said Bogdanovic. “He who is drowned is not troubled by the rain.” He gestured towards the caravan. “Come inside. We have much to discuss.”

  ***

  “Well, what I really want is a tattoo,” said Aaron, sitting on the grimy banquette. “Only I’m not sure what to go for. I want to impress Jacqueline, see. I want to show her that I’m not like everybody else. And I know you did a few of her tattoos, so…”

  Bogdanovic lifted his vest, turned around and showed Aaron the array of tattoos on his back.

  “Whoa! Look at those. Who did ‘em for you?”

  “These?” Bogdanovic turned back round, tugging his vest down. “I did them myself.”

  “Oh, right,” said Aaron, trying to mask the doubtful tone from his voice. “I see. And I, erm…I have money, to pay for a tattoo, that is.”

  “How much money?”

  “Plenty. I got paid yesterday.” He patted his inside pocket. “Got a whole month’s wages in here, more than enough for a tattoo.”

 
“Don’t be so sure. My tattoos are infused with magical powers, and often money is an insufficient method in which to buy them.” Bogdanovic shuffled over to the dining-table and rummaged through some papers. “Yes. Here we are.” He handed a crumpled sheet to Aaron. “The Oracle has already decided for you.”

  Aaron studied the sheet of paper with a shape of some kind on it, made up of six lines, two of which, the second and third up from the bottom, were broken.

  “Wu Wang,” said Bogdanovic, his eyes squeezed shut. “Innocence, the unexpected. There is arousing, there is thunder. Supreme success. Perseverance furthers.”

  “Perseverance?” Aaron repeated, thinking solely of how that word related to him and Jacqueline.

  “Why of course.” Bogdanovic opened his eyes. “If someone is not how he should be he has misfortune, and it does not further him to undertake anything. However, innocence, your true spirit, my young friend, brings good fortune, for the original impulses of the heart are always noble, so you must follow them, be confident and assured of good fortune, and the ultimate achievement of our collective aims.”

  While not really understanding any of this, Aaron couldn’t help but be encouraged.

  “Therefore” – Bogdanovic rummaged through another pile of papers – “I have the perfect image for your first piece of body art.” Finding the sheet of paper he was looking for, he handed it to Aaron. “Here.”

  On the paper was a detailed tattooist’s sketch of a bloodied pig’s head mounted on a stake.

  “What?” said Aaron. “I don’t want a dead pig on my arm.”

  Bogdanovic waved his words away. “But the pig is a perfect representation of the innocence of which the Oracle speaks. The pig is not a dirty animal, the kind of creature derided in the Koran. No. He is intelligent, companionable, resourceful.” He smiled ruefully and shook his head. “So, my young friend, this image is essential for you, for Jacqueline, for she would understand the symbolism, for she knows of the terrible massacre that took place not a few hundred yards from this very spot, the awful crime against God.”

  “Massacre?”

  Bogdanovic stalked over to the window, the only one that wasn’t boarded-up. After wiping his bony palm across the grimy, mildewed glass, he pointed to the surrounding fields visible in the distance.

  “Over there, that is where it took place, that is where those innocent creatures lost their lives in the most savage and indiscriminate manner.”

  “What? I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  Bogdanovic rushed back over, sat next to Aaron and draped an arm around his shoulders.

  “Many years ago, the Americans came here, the military, along with a big multinational corporation, a true representation of the evil U.S. war economy. They had designed a new super-bullet, but had still not tested its efficiency. And because swine have similar skin to humans, they buy hundreds of pigs from a local farmer, the very man who used to own this land. And they shoot them, the pigs, as part of a test, to see how destructive their new bullet really was, one after another.” Bogdanovic leaned closer. Aaron could smell his warm, stale breath. “That day, the sky was a vivid crimson colour. And you know what they say about a red sky in morning?” Aaron shook his head. “It’s a shepherd’s warning…”

  The Story of the Pigs

  The troop transporters arrived just before dawn, demolishing grass verges, clattering into overhanging branches, leaving the narrow roads a mess of collapsed banks and rutted mud. Slowing, each vehicle turned down the dirt-track leading to the pig farm, closely followed by a military jeep

  Dozens of armed soldiers disembarked, and marched over to a cordoned-off area of farmland. A natural dip separated this area from the pig farm itself, leaving around fifty meters of relatively flat ground in between. Guards patrolled the woods on either side, others were sent to the farm gates. As a contingency, a wall of baled straw had been stacked behind what was to become the target area. Just out of sight of this, yet more soldiers had set up a temporary pigpen. In addition, the medical team had erected a large tent to act as a field hospital. Directly opposite, dozens of artillerymen carried out last-minute weapon checks, the repeated snap and click of rifle cartridges being locked and loaded the defining sound.

  As I said, the sky was a vivid crimson colour. The wind had started to pick up, rustling through the surrounding trees.

  At the pre-appointed hour, a soldier led a pig with floppy ears over to the target area, a piece of rope around its neck like a dog lead. Another soldier brought up the rear, coaxing the pig along with a few slaps to its rump. The closer they got the more the doomed animal resisted, prescient of its impending demise. It pulled up, strained and squealed. To placate it, some feed was placed in a small trough. This seemed to have the desired effect: the soldier could remove the rope from its neck, leaving it snuffling and rooting around the trough.

  “Carroll?” shouted the commanding officer.

  A stern-faced soldier, with a hooked nose and tufts of inky hair poking out the sides of his beret, stepped forward, rifle to hand.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Proceed with the first shot,” the officer ordered. “Go for the back leg just below the rump. Fire when ready, Carroll.”

  The soldier moved into position. As he raised his rifle spots of rain started to fall. With the wind blowing right into his face, stirring up pieces of loose straw, he had to take aim several times before being satisfied. Oblivious, the target pig continued to snort and snuffle around. The marksman took in his intended target one more time.

  “Fire when ready,” the officer repeated.

  The soldier squinted to focus. His brow wrinkled. His finger slowly squeezed the trigger. BANG. The bullet discharged like a clap of thunder. The almost instantaneous thud knocked the pig over by sheer force. The screech of pain was high-pitched and agonized. The impact area fizzled and flashed as the bullet exploded and pulpy matter spattered forth. The animal writhed around on the floor. Its back leg had been completely ripped off from the hip joint; the severed limb blown several metres away, its trotter still twitching.

  The marksman walked away, looking at his rifle, like someone who’d never fired a gun before, as if realising for the very first time what his weapon was truly capable of.

  A medical team comprising of one male and one female soldier moved in, kneeling by the stricken animal. The pig was still writhing around, still making that horrible screeching noise. By the time they assessed the injury dark blood was smeared up their forearms drenching the front of their uniforms. The female soldier administered a painkilling injection which took a few seconds to take effect. The mutilated pig’s cries subsided, as did its movement. Two other members of the medical team rushed over with a stretcher. The young woman looked up and shook her head.

  “What’s the problem, Neary?” shouted the officer.

  “It, erm…didn’t make it, Sir.” She peeled off her surgical gloves. “I think the shock combined with the potency of the injection must’ve killed it.”

  “Damn! Never mind. We’ll get the offending cadaver removed. Have some junior members of the team play around with the wound, dressing it and whatnot. Let’s turn this negative into a positive, and get another target out here pronto.”

  The next pig was slightly larger and had a black mark on its rump. The first gunshot had clearly startled it. Its wide eyes were so full of terror, so expressive – so very human. The two soldiers had trouble dragging it over to the target area, having to force its snout into the trough, and wait there until it became absorbed with eating and rooting around inside.

  “Marshall, let’s be having you,” the officer shouted. “Chop, chop.”

  A tall, lean soldier stepped forward.

  “Fire when ready, Marshall.”

  He didn’t waste any time. No sooner had he took aim than he fired. The super bullet impacted much lower; the back leg shattering, sending the pig tumbling over, kicking out its other legs.

  The medics
dashed over.

  “Isolate the wound,” Neary instructed. “Apply some pressure to the severed artery.”

  With utmost care, she administered another painkilling injection, more successfully this time around. For the broken animal quieted and its movement receded, yet breathing was discernible. The two medics set to work, cleaning and dressing the wound. All the time, the young woman patted the pig’s head, whispering soft practised words of reassurance.

  “The flow of blood has been successfully stemmed, Sir,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Condition is stable. I reduced the painkilling dosage this time and it seems to have done the trick. The, erm…patient is ready for removal.”

  “Good work,” said the officer. “You two can take a break now.”

  Walking over, he took out a service revolver, placed it to the pig’s head and fired. Bloody discharge and yet more fragments of pulpy matter spattered against his shiny combat boots.

  “Shepherdson,” he shouted. “Start digging those disposal trenches. We’ll bury the dead animals as and when from now on.”

  The rain fell heavier. A dozen more pigs were disposed of. The sound of gunfire; the explosive impact; the squealing; the stench of death carried on the blustery wind. The target area became a quagmire of mud and blood. Pieces of dismembered animal were strewn everywhere. Drenched to the bone, soldiers with stretchers shuttled wounded or dead pigs from the temporary field hospital to the open grave.

  Inside the tent was pandemonium. The blood-stained medical teams were either sawing off damaged limbs or frantically attending to a series of head and trunk injuries. All kinds of military personnel rushed around shouting for instruments, medication, or some form of assistance. The prostrate animals lay on treatment tables with eyes rolling, whimpering and shivering; many too traumatised to utter a sound.

  Outside, the straw bale wall had been partially demolished. Soldiers were forcing a pig into an upright position, wedging it in between two metal barriers, while another zipped up a bulletproof vest. When elevated the animal became strangely passive; only its head lolled from side to side.