Birdman

by Mo Hayder

  ‘Calm down.’ He put a soft, reassuring hand on her shoulder and pressed her down into the mattress. ‘Calmly does it.’

  Joni wrenched her head back and snarled at him from behind the gag.

  ‘Bitch,’ he said softly and straddled her. ‘Shut up now, bitch. I’ve been good with you, but you’re pushing me.’ He shoved her down onto the bed and Joni became very still under his hands, watching him warily with her good eye.

  ‘Good.’ He tipped back on his heels and wiped the sweat from his face. ‘Now, listen. I’m not going to kill you.’ He bent over and, ignoring the shudder that went through her body, gently rested his face against her neck. ‘I only want it to be like it was that night. Do you understand me?’

  He could tell from the single tear that trickled from her cheek onto his forehead that she had accepted that. She stopped struggling. But to be quite certain he double taped her torso to the bed, crossing the tape over her hips; he knew from the Greenwich woman that even unconscious the human body responds violently to pain.

  He reached for the styptic pencil.

  ‘This won’t take long.’

  Tongue between his teeth, he painstakingly drew a mark just above the old scar where the new incision would be. Joni dragged in desperate shallow breaths through her nose as he spat on the scalpel and wiped it across his tunic.

  ‘Not much to cut through under here, Joni.’ He grimaced and the soft flesh bloomed up over the blade like cheese, strained, then relented and split long, like a heavy fruit. A muffled keening sound came from the tape mask. Joni’s pelvis jerked frantically against the mattress. There was just a thin smattering of blood scattered amongst the freckles on her belly, nothing much. Bliss bent down to squint up into the new wound. Past the bloody, yellow fat he could see the implants squinting at him from their envelope of meat.

  ‘Lucky,’ he breathed and patted Joni’s knee. ‘They’ve been put above the muscle. Just hold on one moment …’ He bit his lip and slowly inserted his fingers into the hole, creeping it around inside the breast.

  Joni’s good eye widened as his index finger hooked around the silicon bag. Her head thrashed side to side.

  ‘Quiet now. Don’t twist.’ His thumb and forefinger closed on the sack. Confident now, he tugged it. ‘Easy. Easy.’ Joni’s feet scissored, thigh muscles taut as small drums, as the implant slipped out drawing an egg-cupful of fluid with it.

  He gently placed it on her stomach.

  ‘There we are. Easy, wasn’t it?’ He wiped his hands on his scrubs. ‘Now let’s see. One down, one to go.’

  ... 47

  Suddenly, without warning, the summer turned its back on England and settled complacently over the Iberian peninsula. Rain came to London yet again. When Caffery woke, Rebecca asleep next to him, he could smell the change in the air, feel the humidity on his skin. He lay there for a moment, his heart speeding, sensations rushing at him, trying to decide what had woken him. Something in the flat? Joni returning? Or just a dream? He listened hard to the silence for a while, until his heart steadied. Rebecca lay on her side, her right arm flung out over the edge of the bed, her left curled up so the hand was lightly touching the shoulder as if posed for a classical sculpture. Her face was turned from him. He raised himself on his elbows to look at her. She was very still. Still and—

  Jesus, Jack, don’t do that.

  He almost laughed. For a moment he’d imagined she was dead. But her small rib cage rose and fell, and when he put his face very close to her breast he could hear the reassuring almost inaudible whistle of the air in her lungs, the avian fluttering of her heart.

  A dying bird.

  He sat up abruptly, got out of bed, went into the kitchen and put his face under the tap. He didn’t want to think about Birdman, about what he’d done. Not when Rebecca was sleeping next to him.

  He straightened, dripping, the image fading. Joni wasn’t back—last night, before he’d taken Rebecca to bed, he had put the chain on the front door—Joni would have had to wake him to get into the flat. Now he put the kettle on, poured a glass of water and drank it quickly, staring at the photographs on the mantelpiece above the freezer.

  Some of the pictures showed Rebecca: dressed in paint-splattered dungarees, paintbrush in hand; or bleary eyed on a rumpled pillow, hand held out in protest to the lens; another was taken on a pebbled beach, Rebecca in shorts, tongue out, cross-eyed under an outsize floppy hat.

  He rested the glass on the ledge and picked up a snap of Joni. She was prettier here than he remembered, probably because she didn’t appear stoned. She was clear-eyed, staring into the lens, a cigarette in one hand, her mouth open in mid-sentence, a finger extended towards the cameraman as if trying to explain something important, to make a point. Her hair was cut bluntly so that it fell to the shoulders, a low fringe skimmed her brows.

  Caffery took the photograph to the table and sat, his elbows on either side of it. Joni stared back at him, trying to make that point. He ran his finger across the fringe.

  The scars on the victims’ heads were a perfect circle; from back to front. Kayleigh Hatch’s and Susan Lister’s white-blond hair had been cut in a fringe. Caffery traced his hand across his own forehead. On the victims the marks were outside the hairline, below it on the forehead. That was not the natural place a wig would sit. It was too low.

  Unless—

  Unless it had a fringe. Like Joni.

  He jolted to his feet—his heart hammering.

  Not Joni now but Joni then—before she had the hair cut. Before, Jesus, of course, before she had the implants. It’s the old Joni he wants.

  ‘Becky?’ He kissed her neck. ‘Becky. Wake up.’

  Rebecca stirred and woke.

  Jack—she thought of him last night: in the hallway, and afterwards, in her bed when he’d hit his stride—the things he’d done to her. She sleepily reached out of the sheet, searching for his erection. When she realized he had trousers on and was buttoning his shirt she opened her eyes. ‘Are you going?’

  ‘I’ve got to.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Joni didn’t come home. D’you know where she got to?’

  ‘Not home?’ She rolled onto her side, rubbing her eyes. ‘Oh, I don’t know—she does that sometimes.’

  He brushed her fringe from her forehead and kissed her cheek. Her hair smelled of baby shampoo. ‘Rebecca, let me ask you something about her—it’s important.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I am right Joni’s got implants?’

  Catching the note in his voice she looked up. ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘This.’ He held the photograph out. ‘When was it taken?’

  ‘That’s, I don’t know, three years old, why—’

  ‘And the implants?’

  ‘God.’ Rebecca blinked at the photo. ‘I’m not sure, just after I met her, so maybe five years—’

  ‘OK—listen.’ He stood, ran a hand across the shirt. Trying to smooth out yesterday’s creases. ‘I need the painting. The one on the easel.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll bring it back.’

  ‘Take it. I’m sick of the bloody sight of it.’ She rolled over and propped herself up on her elbows, looking at him with serious eyes. ‘Jack, you’re not thinking …?’

  ‘No, I—’ He paused. ‘Rebecca, don’t look at me like that.’ He pulled on his tie, ran fingers over it, flattening it against his chest. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her warm head. ‘Honestly. Just get Joni to give me a call when she comes in. And you—you be careful, OK? I mean that. If you have to go out call me first. Let me know what you’re up to.’

  Afterwards Rebecca sat at the kitchen table, sleepily curling her hair around her fingers, staring at Jack’s discarded roll-ups in the ashtray, waiting for a stained two-cup espresso maker to boil. The rain rolled in greasy trails down the window. Her throat was sore and tight.

  It wouldn’t be the first time she hasn’t
come home. Nothing unusual, absolutely nothing unusual. She just got a bit out of control after I left the pub and wound up at Adrenaline Village or some scuzzy peyote hideout in Camden—or she slept it off at someone’s place and she’ll be back, tail between her legs—

  Then why’s Jack so interested all of a sudden?

  ‘Jesus.’ She stood up, angry at her tinkering imagination, and went into the studio—casting around for something to level her mind. In the street outside vividly coloured umbrellas jostled along: pink, violet and yellow. Tropical-sized raindrops bounced off the roof. She pinned new paper to the drawing board and paused.

  He took her picture—he thinks she’s in trouble …

  Rebecca put down the drawing pins and, leaving the paper dangling from the board, went to the phone in the hall.

  Bliss stood in the bedroom doorway looking at Joni, her head lolling on one side, the pale mucus-coloured implants leaving bloody stains on her ribcage. She had been unconscious as he sewed her up and he’d left the implants on her belly for her to look at when she woke. He had slept in another room, determined to wait for the birthday. But Mrs Frobisher had woken him early, even before the building work, clunk clunk clunking around upstairs like an old wooden doll.

  She made him nervous—always complaining, always ferreting around and sniffing at him. The birthday party would be a safer, more comfortable event at the bungalow, but he couldn’t risk the car journey. Not with Joni bloodied and volatile as she was. He took the phone off the hook and started to blow up the balloons.

  Caffery’s knife-edge sense of urgency was back—Amedure noticed it when she met him in reception and took the folded cigarette paper from his hands.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘What’s this you’re giving me? You need to fill out a submission sheet.’

  ‘Can you match it to the hair from the last PM?’

  ‘Probably. But a submission sheet, please, and this needs to be logged back at Shrivemoor.’

  ‘I’m on my way now. How long will this take you?’

  ‘Half a day. Less if you’re nice to me.’

  ‘Any news on the cement? The trade examination?’

  ‘Ah.’ She smiled. ‘I know someone who hasn’t checked in with his team this morning. The CCRL’ve got the results—they phoned them all over to Marilyn Kryotos—’ But he was gone—hurrying down the steps and pulling car keys from his pocket. ‘I’ll fill the HO Lab in for you, then,’ Dr Amedure murmured to herself, and went back to the lift.

  It was still early, but Betty was already at the Dog and Bell. In the background the Alsatian was barking.

  ‘She went with him from the hospital. You know the one that’s always dreaming after her. Him that sits in the salon bar and drinks halves.’

  ‘Malcolm, you mean?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Thank God.

  ‘He spent all of forty quid in here yesterday lunch. Bought her God knows how many bottles of Blue Nun and after that she was on the Scotch. By three o’clock I don’t think she knew her own name. Why does she do it to herself, Pinky? A lovely girl like that? It doesn’t make sense.’

  You see—Rebecca told herself as she put the phone down—you bloody paranoiac—it’s just Joni being Joni.

  Upstairs she found, amongst the tissues and marijuana seeds tangled in Joni’s duvet, the black and silver Kookaï organizer—pages battered and scribbled on, love hearts and smiley faces drawn in ice-cream colours. Joni indexed her friends by their first names. Under M, next to Malcolm’s name, she had scribbled one of her little sugar-pink faces. Yawning—a string of black ‘Z’s stretching out of its mouth.

  Bliss’s phone was engaged. Jack, too, was talking—the answerphone picked up. Rebecca silently replaced the receiver and sat in the studio, staring at Malcolm’s address and phone number, telling herself it could wait, telling herself to leave it, reasoning herself along a tired old circuit, until she couldn’t sit still any longer.

  She jumped up and went into her bedroom. ‘Yup,’ she murmured, pulling on shorts, a T-shirt, brown dock shoes. ‘That’s you all right. Never leave things alone, can you?’

  In the Jaguar, Caffery had punched out Shrivemoor’s number on the Nokia and was listening to the ringing tone. He sat at traffic lights, behind a windscreen misted with rain, the phone pressed to his ears, looking absently at the painting next to him on the passenger seat.

  In the background stood Joni, up on the stage, hands raised, head bent slightly down, behind her the stage curtains and pub windows, the Young’s brewery crest bevelled in the glass. And in the middle foreground, lips slightly parted, head turned in profile to the viewer, a face that made Caffery’s blood tingle.

  He picked up the paper and tilted it to the window. The face—those bad teeth, curiously spaced, like a child between its milk and adult sets—it was all as familiar as his own hands.

  I know you, I know you. I know the voice that comes out of your mouth, I’ve spoken to you, shaken your hand—

  ‘Hello? Incident room.’

  He dropped the painting and sat up. ‘Yeah, Marilyn, hi, Marilyn.’

  ‘Jack—my God, Maddox’s having an eppy about you. You missed the morning meeting, you big prick.’

  ‘I know, I know. Apologize for me. And, Marilyn? Did I get a call from the US this morning?’

  ‘I’m your fairy godmother, Jack, don’t forget that—I’ve been working on it while you were still in dreamland.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It doesn’t retail in the south and there’s only one developer in London using that batch—Korner-Mackelson’s—I spoke to their chirpy secretary—they’ve a site down near Belmarsh, one in Canning Town and one in Lewisham.’

  ‘Lewisham?’ He glanced up at the traffic lights. ‘OK. Where in Lewisham?’

  ‘Greenwich border—Brazil Street. Off Blackheath Hill. An old school building. They’re developing it into lofts.’

  The lights were changing. Caffery cancelled the left signal and swerved in front of a car. Someone leaned on a horn. ‘Marilyn? You there?’

  ‘As always.’

  ‘Tell Maddox for me, will you, tell him I’m running late. I’m about half an hour away—and, Marilyn? Apologize, OK?’

  Today Greenwich reminded her of Paris, with the blue-striped awnings pulled down. Cars splashed the legs of pedestrians, shopkeepers stood looking out of the windows, faces lit by the odd, green, tropical light. She cycled fast, as if her sour anxiety could be pumped out like sweat.

  In Lewisham the traffic was heavy. She found Brazil Street, easily, the construction workers, sheltering under the scaffolding on the old schoolhouse, waved and whistled at her, riding through the rain in her T-shirt and shorts. She propped her bike in number 34A’s carport, next to Bliss’s Peugeot. The rain was pattering on the corrugated plastic roof as she rang the bell.

  ‘Yes?’ He blinked nervously when he opened his front door and found her standing there. ‘Yes? What do you want?’

  ‘Joni.’ She wiped the rain from her face and looked past him into the flat. A solitary green balloon floated like a ghost in the passage behind him. ‘Is she here? I want to talk to J—’

  ‘Yes. I heard you. W-what makes you think she’s here? Eh?’

  ‘I don’t know—sometimes she ends up here—when she’s had a drink.’

  ‘Mmm …’

  ‘Look—’ She shook her head, exasperated. ‘Malcolm, it’s important. Do you know where she’s gone?’

  ‘Now, Pinky.’ His tongue worked under the fat lips as if he was chewing something. He pulled his cardigan tight, covering the distended stomach. ‘You know full well Joni’s got no time for me.’

  ‘OK.’ She held up her hands and turned away. His self-pity irritated her. ‘OK, I’m sorry. If you see her, tell her to call me. It’s important.’

  She was kicking down the bicycle pedal when she sensed that Bliss was still watching her from the doorway.

&
nbsp; She looked up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I—’ He glanced apprehensively out into the street. ‘I didn’t say she wasn’t here. I didn’t say that.’

  Rebecca frowned. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You misinterpreted what I said.’ Bliss stepped back from the door and gestured down the hallway. ‘She’s still asleep. Come in and I’ll tell her you’re here.’

  Rebecca slowly pushed the bike back against the wall.

  My God, Malcolm, you are the crown prince of weirdos. You really are.

  She walked back to the door, shaking her head.

  Brazil Street was a leafy, residential road, lined with dripping plum trees. The semi-detached Victorian houses boasted driveways and long, shrub-loaded front gardens. Most of them looked prosperous, garages added, drenched in Virginia creeper and honeysuckle, high-quality second-hand cars parked in front. Caffery left the Jaguar at the top of the street and, tenting his jacket above his head, followed the complex diagram of clay skid-steer tyre tracks to the Korner-Mackelson gates.

  Inside the gates two yellow cement mixers stood like guardian lions, either side of the driveway—beyond them a JCB, unmanned, rain streaking the mud on its flanks. The site extended a hundred yards beyond, to the corner of the red-brick schoolhouse, where it doglegged and continued almost a third of a mile along the end of the gardens.

  He wrapped his fingers around the railings and stared at the labourers huddled under the scaffolding, smoking and drinking coffee from Thermos flasks, waiting for the rain to stop. Just being here, close, maybe touching, the hidden vital circuitry that led to Birdman, made his pulse speed. With the evidence from FSS it would be easy to get an order to open the company personnel files, Marilyn could crossmatch them, see what HOLMES hit—but in this moment, standing here in the rain, Caffery was the closest anyone had been: nose to nose.

  The temptation, as always, was to take it into his own hands, act now: not to wait and do it by the rule book. But he knew the line he was treading. He pushed himself away from the fence, went directly to the Jaguar—socks and shirt damp—unlocked the car door, crawled inside, put the key in the ignition, then suddenly, in one fast movement, flung the door back open and jumped out into the street.