“I would have gone in there by now and threatened to shut him up myself.” McCall shook her head in mock disappointment, taking a sip of tea.
“Wanted to punch him in the face for about five hours now, sir,” the guard exchanged a knowing grin. Ah, the patience of our duty officers filled me with pride. The police guard stopped us from entering the pokey room. “Can’t take them in.” ‘Them’ referred to our stolen food from downstairs.
“Fine, take it.” I tutted, and the guard didn’t hesitate. I knew exactly what he was angling for. Sure enough, he barely wasted two minutes before chomping down some chips.
“Thanks, sir, I’m starving. Been standing out here all blooming night. The other guy still hasn’t taken over, so I’ve had to survive on hospital food and soups that consist of more water than anything else,” the guard informed through mouthfuls of golden chips.
My precious chips. McCall got away with keeping hers, so I planned to nab a few later.
McCall patted the guard’s shoulder to show our support, whilst I shoved into Paul’s room. McCall bundled along behind. His hospital room stunk of steriliser and that strange plasticky smell. We could barely see, for every light source had either stayed off or closed due to Paul’s request.
Not any longer.
I wasted no time ripping the curtains open to startle Paul Roberts, who pretended to be asleep, mumbling things under his breath.
“Rise and shine, Paul.” My smugness could not be disguised. “Dowse in the sunlight, instead of residing in your pit,” I suggested with regard to his room.
McCall located some spare chairs and placed them so we could sit either side of the scumbag.
Paul Robert’s cheeks appeared visibly gaunter than the other day. He’d refused to eat proper food since being admitted to hospital, in protest to them saving his life. He wanted to die. The nurses had to force-feed him through means of a drip.
Paul groaned loudly, playing the sympathetic card nobody would fall for.
“Be quiet,” McCall had no time or patience for him. I respected that notion and didn’t oppose those demeaning statements.
“We know about your rather… graphic speeches. We’ve only come by to reveal the good news face to face,” I explained, a delightful sound of glee in my voice.
“Piss off,” Paul mumbled, both eyes still closed and probably expecting a better reaction than the one he received.
“I can’t do that, Paul. You’re under arrest for the murder of Gavin Ellis and Laura Smith. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will harm your defence if not mentioned when asked, something which you later rely on in court.” I took a large breath from the long-winded sentence.
“The second those nurses clear you, you’re going away, Paul,” McCall informed the hellish man. He wasn’t even worthy of this much time, let alone wasted breath.
Something we said must have hit a nerve, for both of Paul’s eyes clicked open, blinking in the winter's light.
“No,” he refused point-blank and pulled on the drip inserted into his arm. “I’m not going there.” The hospital nightgown showed off a few hidden tattoos displayed. One depicted another pentagram, the other weird symbols I would never understand.
“You’ve got no choice.” My brisk voice put an end to the false hope and sent Paul writhing in despair. The flattened bed rattled from his sudden movements.
“You’ve got nothing on me. Prove it.” The stubborn criminal refused to believe us.
“We found the knife stashed underneath your sofa. Done in a hurry, I’ll admit. Matched the blood from Gavin Ellis, with your prints all over the handle. Then there was the matter of your shoes.” I let McCall have the glory of explaining his next slip up.
“You wore the same shoes when we found you, to the day you visited Laura Smith—”
“Shoes prove nothing,” the devil spat towards the sergeant’s face. I would have ripped that man to shreds, but McCall stayed bold and savvy.
“They prove everything,” McCall retorted, closing in on the criminal. That’s my girl. “The same shoes match the one print uncovered in Laura’s house, where you murdered her. We scanned your boots too. Another match.”
“I didn’t kill them,” Paul began a series of justifications which rained down a dime a dozen.
“Oh, come off it, Paul. You’re nicked, jailed, arrested. No matter the lingo, it all means the same. You’re going down for a long time. I’ll make sure of it,” I vowed.
“You didn’t let me finish,” the snarling man repeated that initial statement. Clearer this time. “I didn’t kill them unfairly. They deserved it, both of them.”
Those six words hung in the air and waited to explode deadlier than explosives. My blood boiled and fists balled. Nobody deserved murder, except, perhaps Paul Roberts. McCall noticed the interior change happening inside and shook her head in my direction.
“Finlay. Don’t. He’s under our supervision,” she reminded me of the duty as a detective inspector. “Why did they deserve it, Paul?” McCall used his name to create an association between the two.
A sympathetic tear rolled down Paul Robert’s pale cheek. It shocked me to see his tears weren’t formed from blood or other creepy, voodoo crap. My attention closed in on the machines beeping all around us.
“They didn’t follow the rules,” Paul stubbornly shouted. A mixture of personalities, so it appeared. The pillow beneath his head moved from pressure, and he pushed down even further, so it almost suffocated him.
“Rules?” I sounded unimpressed.
“What rules?” McCall queried.
“His rules,” Paul drooled onto the pillow, a wreck of a man. A shadow, in fact. There would be no way of worming out of jail time now that he’d admitted to killing them both.
McCall’s brain ticked over, taking a while to catch up to the meaning. “God’s rules? They didn’t follow the bible?”
“Don’t talk to me about that… liar,” Paul’s anger reached a new high, as blood vessels swelled in his temples, and grey eyes flashed sinisterly. “God doesn’t exist. The devil lives inside us all. God can’t purify us. Not even me, or you.”
“Not even Linda?” McCall asked slowly. I half expected Paul to erupt in flames and char the hospital to pieces at the sound of his wife’s name.
Paul’s anger instantly exchanged to hearty sobs, heavy and full-bodied. The office guard checked through the window to ensure we weren’t hurting the murderer.
“I prayed for her. For God to save her life, right here in this very hospital,” Paul’s voice amended to a scarily low pitch. My ears strained even to hear. “At one point,” he chuckled, sending shivers down our spines. This guy felt like a rollercoaster that wouldn’t end, “I even struck up a deal with God. My life for Linda’s. I prepared to die so that she could live.”
The hospital chair squeaked beneath my changing weight as I intently awaited an explanation that made sense.
“I devoted my entire life towards serving God's purposes, His larger plan. Linda couldn’t have altered her life anymore to suit His wishes. I served Him for years of my life, and He still stole her away from me. God lied to me.” Paul paused, taking a deep breath. “I vowed to live my life as intended from then on. To dabble in the sins as never before, instead of being so painstakingly… good. I was happy for the first time since Linda was stolen away. I gambled for the first time, had sex outside of marriage. Lots of sex. Alcohol on a night out.” Paul listed several reasons he enjoyed dancing with the devil, for some reason speaking directly in my direction.
“For what? What is it achieving?” I couldn’t help but get involved in this debate.
“Satan promised me a joyous return to the underworld. Where we can do as we want when we want,” Paul kept referring to ‘we.’
“What if he’s lying to you, as God did?” McCall asked curiously.
Paul refused to listen to McCall’s interjections.
“You can’t break laws depending on your personal bel
iefs. If that were the case, thousands of Christians or Jews alike would be out there, wreaking havoc. Believing in Satan doesn’t excuse anyone from committing a murder, let alone two,” I finished, heaving from anger.
McCall’s fury also struggled to subside. I could tell by the way her ears changed pink on top.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Paul shook his head, oblivious to seeing this in any other light. “You small-minded, petty, oblivious police officers who—”
“Watch your mouth, or I’ll send you down for two lifetimes instead of one,” I warned him.
“You mentioned rules. If not God’s then who’s?” McCall altered the original statement ever so slightly to fit Paul’s warped perceptions.
“My saviour. I live my life by his rules, but some people break those rules.”
Now, it got interesting. Paul fisted the bed sheets tightly, an inner dialogue playing out in his head to help him decide whether to spill the beans or not. A literal angel and devil on his shoulders. The guy was a walking symbol of faith.
“The dead boy found me walking on the Bay, alone at night,” Paul said at last. “He came to mug me, treating me like all the other pitiful people he’d mugged before me. I warned him, and when he refused to leave, I destroyed him.”
“I’ll say,” McCall’s horrific memories of Gavin’s body came back to haunt the unsuspecting sergeant.
“I remembered seeing the kid’s face plastered over the news once, for raping somebody’s young girl without consent. I served real justice, unlike you,” Paul’s eyes hardened as he stared at us.
“An eye for an eye never works,” I half quoted the bible, having seen many revenge acts in my career. They never solved another crime or bettered an act committed in the first place.
“Not in God’s book, because he wants us to be weaker than Him,” Paul asserted. “I’m not the bad guy here.”
I scoffed and nearly choked on my own bile in disbelief. Paul reached out for a clear plastic cup of water, filled at the nurse's expense by their drinks fountain. I would’ve filled it up from dirty toilet water, personally. His set of rotting teeth bit down on the plastic. Once. Then twice. Then again, before finally downing a load of water in one.
“And Laura? What did she do wrong? What rule could she possibly have broken?” McCall’s tears shone in her eyes but not from sadness. No, those were tears of intense wrath at this man who could sit there and admit to killing people so easily.
“I found Laura by the Bay, and she recognised me from the church. Her faith in God was wavering too, so I told her nothing but the truth. She invited me back to her house for a chat, and that’s when she told me she didn’t want to live anymore.” The plastic cup pinged in between Paul’s squeezing fingers, imagining the feel of flesh from Laura’s twisting body. “Laura begged me to relieve her from all her inner conflicts.”
“You didn’t just relieve Laura. You killed her. She had a life and children outside of your warped perception of right and wrong.” McCall didn’t raise her voice once, deciding a quiet rage would be a better way of dealing with him.
Paul threw the cup over to a nearby bin. It missed. “I spared the children. It’s not their fault their father was a fraud and their mother an ill-educated Christian.”
“Life and death isn’t your game to play. Nobody can make that decision!” My temper, however, was not so easily disguised. “What was with the numbers, Paul?” A faint trickle of sweat slid down the side of my face again.
Another chuckle emitted from Paul’s mouth. “I’ll leave that for you to figure out.”
“Who was your next victim going to be?” McCall asked abruptly.
Paul sniffed once. Then twice. And again. “There wasn’t one.”
“That’s not true, is it? You would’ve killed again. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have bothered leaving the numbers for us.” McCall declined Paul’s attempts to brush us off. “Three sixes, the devil’s number. I guessed when I researched those pills he overdosed on. He’s got obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
Paul blinked precisely three times over, and I nodded.
“Everything is in groups of three,” I added in. “The sixes on his victims. The sixes matched up to his inner beliefs as well as his underlying condition. It became him. I’d presume Paul hasn’t taken the medication prescribed for a manner of weeks. Months even. To have such a huge supply readily available isn’t easy.”
“Some people don’t want to be helped,” McCall concurred.
“Paul?” I tried to get his attention, but he was deliberately ignoring me with a glazed-over expression. We tried to get him to speak a few times more, to no avail. He’d given up.
“Well, you’ve admitted to everything. We’ve got evidence which means we’ve got no use for you anymore, Paul.” I stood up, gesturing for McCall to do the same. “Rot in hell.”
As suspected, Paul Roberts burst back to life, practically foaming bubbles from his mouth. A scorned man, lying pathetically in a hospital bed knowing those free years of life were done and dusted. McCall gripped our police recorder from the bag and pressed the stop button.
One last look back at Paul revealed a broken man, clutching desperately to his empty dreams of twisted glory, converted from saint to sinner. The devil was always due to find him in the end. Fate, perhaps.
“Ready?” McCall linked her surprisingly muscly arm in mine.
Cooper and McCall. Dalgety Bay’s finest. Never undefeated. Battered, maybe, but practice made perfect.
Shining and glowing from our triumphant outcome. It felt like the end of every cop movie ever written. Except everything had only just begun. Our footsteps tottered down past wards and corridors alike.
“That wasn’t so bad,” my hindsight kicked in, letting me see our situation for what it truly was. “Everything’s changing, but perhaps that’s not such an awful thing. You and me, McCall. Till the end of days.” I licked my lips contentedly.
“You don’t need to make it sound so miserable,” McCall jested. My free arm lifted out my favourite sunglasses, and it took one swift movement to shove the glasses onto my nose and prepare for a storm in the making. This time I was ready.
A long inhale was required by us both after hearing a frenzy of noise outside. McCall unlinked her arm and brushed herself down to appear presentable. I didn’t want to walk out of there alone, not after my mental scars from the last time around.
“Let's go,” she urged.
The second our feet left the building, we touched on foreign ground. A ground where the press clamoured to speak to us, but not demandingly or with resentment. A rare occurrence took place, a calmer interview where they applauded our efforts and the CID unit all at once.
“DI Cooper?” A male journalist thrust his own handheld recorder over. “Paul Roberts is being kept inside his hospital room for days. When will he be released?”
“Released may be a strong word for the operation taking place, as we have obtained vital evidence to prove Paul Roberts is guilty of the murders of both Gavin Ellis and Laura Smith.” I had rehearsed my speech back at CID, and as I spoke, I clocked a few familiar faces straying anxiously to hear the news.
Among them were Kris Ellis, unusually quiet and dressed in a tamer style today. Properly covered up and no ridiculous dressing gown in sight. Jimmy Smith held onto his aunties arm bravely, barely understanding what any of this truly meant. Mandy Smalls recently arrived too. The rest of the sailing club team gathered around and cheered in relief at the news.
“DS McCall. Is there anything you would like to tell the locals, and everyone listening?” The same reporter switched over to McCall.
“This event and the people's lives it affected continues to wrap up, although we’ve found our criminal,” she said solemnly. “There will be a mass parade through town to celebrate their lives and honour their deaths. I ask that you come to offer your respect and support to all those affected. Above all else, I wish you all a Merry Christmas. Hold your loved ones tight and treat
each other with kindness and respect during some difficult times.”
McCall’s earnest face was not in vain. The camera focused on her directly, and everyone listened in hushed tones to what the detective sergeant had to say. McCall quickly became something of a local favourite, a face that people entrusted to soothe them, calm them.
“DS McCall, can I—?” the noise blurred out when I spotted the satin-wrapped Georgina Ryder. Her heavily lined stare threw me off guard momentarily, and nothing exchanged between us.
A larger, heavier microphone passed McCall to point at me, interrupting Georgina. “DI Cooper. What are your plans now the murder case is finished?
“Paperwork.”
Twenty-Eight
Christmas eve arrived upon us all too quickly. After all the drama and press surrounding Paul Roberts, we’d barely had a chance to breathe. Exactly as happened after any case, CID were up to their necks in paperwork and agreements with media outlets. However, Christmas Eve would be unique, my first night out with the team to celebrate DCI Campbell’s retirement.
When the team found out the news, DCI Campbell received too many cakes to eat himself, so they ended up circulating back around the offices. I’d eaten one too many slices, in dangerous territory of not fitting into any of my suits.
I fiddled, tugged the new tie tighter around my neck, and glanced away from my warped mirror reflection to the four other suit choices discarded on my bedroom floor. We wore suits all day, every day. How were we supposed to look any different for special occasions? Unfortunately, my shining bruise from the beating was still noticeable.
I reached the pub with plenty of time to spare, pushing the negative memories of my last rendezvous with Georgina Ryder there. Noise poured out from inside, full of CID officers already rowdy and starting the long night ahead early. My nerves shot to an all-time high. I’d never experienced this kind of group setting before, and I internally crossed everything, hoping it went well. A bunch of flowers and a card was bunched up in my slightly trembling hands. From behind, a few scattered groups of locals and young adults roamed the streets to feel the magical feeling that only comes once a year.
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