Eye Snatcher

by Ryan Casey

He was wearing a black suit jacket with a red shirt underneath.

  His smile was wide, shaky, delighted.

  He had a blood red tie. Blue socks poking out of his black trousers, which were way too small.

  And he was holding a knife.

  FIFTEEN

  Brian’s heart pounded as he lay there on the ground, the suspect looking down at him holding a knife.

  He wanted to say so much, as he tasted the copper of blood in his mouth. He wanted to call for help, as he heard cars whooshing by on the surrounding roads, the laughs of children at the school in the distance. He could feel his phone pressing against his thigh, and he wanted to reach for it.

  But he was stuck. Frozen.

  The suspect stared down at him with manic, bloodshot eyes. He had that fucked up smile on his face—the same one he’d had when Brian had seen him at the bus stop across the road from where Sam Betts’ earring was, where Beth Turner must’ve gone missing. The way he held the knife, looked over Brian, it was like he was totally assured about what he was about to do. Totally confident.

  And that terrified Brian.

  “Please,” Brian said. It was all he could manage. He felt weak for saying it, but what else could he do but beg? “Put the knife down. We can talk.”

  “All I hear is ‘talk, talk, talk,’” the guy said. His voice was fast. His eyes widened a bit as he spoke. He banged the side of his head with his free palm. “Talk, talk, talk. Always voices talking. Telling me to do this, to do that. Always.”

  Brian gulped away the acidic taste of vomit swelling up his throat. He battled with every muscle in his body and pulled himself upright. “What voices? What do the voices tell you to do?”

  The guy pushed his knife towards Brian when he saw him rising.

  Brian lifted his hands. “Woah! I’m… calm it there. I don’t mean any harm. Seriously.”

  He could see this nutter’s bottom jaw was shaking. See his bulging eyes weighing Brian up, working out what to do with him.

  And in the meantime, Brian weighed the guy up in turn. Worked out what to do to get away from him. How to knock him to the ground. Whether it was worth it.

  “What’s your name?” Brian asked. “I’ll… I’ll stay down here. Stay right on the ground. I’d just like to know your—”

  “Mark or Joseph. Depending—depending on my mother’s mood.” He laughed a little, like it was some kind of stand-up joke that was completely common sense.

  Brian did all he could to make his plasticine face force a smile. Didn’t want to gamble with this nutjob. “Mark or… or Joseph. I’m Brian. Brian McDone.”

  “I know who you are,” he said.

  Brian felt the hairs on his arms stand up. “You… you do?”

  Mark/Joseph’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve read about you in the books. In the good books. You’re the bad man. The Devil. You want to do bad things to me. But the voices, they told me you’d come. They told me what to do to you when you came—”

  “I’m not the bad man,” Brian said. He lifted his arms again. Heart pounded. More floaters and colours filled his eyes. “I just want to talk. Mark. Joseph. I just… I just want to talk about you. About your… your hobbies. About—”

  Mark/Joseph took a few steps towards Brian with the knife. Brian flinched, tried to edge away, but Mark/Joseph reached over him and pushed the gate shut. He crouched down. Pressed the knife up to Brian’s neck. So close that Brian could feel it tearing the top layer of his skin.

  Mark/Joseph peered into Brian’s eyes. His smelly breath filled Brian’s lungs. “Did you see it too?”

  Brian did all he could not to break down. To keep his cool. “See… see what?”

  The knife pressed a little closer to Brian’s neck. “The colours. The—the beautiful red. I know I shouldn’t have done it. I know I was… I was bad for doing it. But it was beautiful, wasn’t it? She was beautiful.”

  Brian felt his eyes clouding as he stared into Mark/Joseph’s. As he looked for some kind of reasoning behind them. Some kind of humanity. “You don’t have to do this,” Brian said. “We can … we can talk about it. It can end right here—”

  Mark/Joseph shook his head. Pressed the blade further into Brian’s neck, the sharp pain searing right through Brian’s body. “Never ends. Never. Everyone tells me it ends. Everyone all my life tells me it ends. But it—it makes me feel good. The voices, they make me feel good. I do what they say. And it makes me feel good.”

  Brian tried to gulp but the knife, pressed hard against him, stopped his Adam’s apple from bobbing. “Why?” he asked. It was all he could. “Why would … why would you do that? To those—to those children?”

  Mark/Joseph’s eyes narrowed. Went less certain, more bloodshot. “Because I had to. The voices, they told me to do it. And… and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. It was an accident. Those boys, those girls, it… it was an accident, I swear.”

  Brian could see a degree of guilt in Mark/Joseph’s face. He could see tears building up. He could feel the knife, which pressed right up to his neck, loosening.

  “Accidents… accidents happen,” Brian said, his muscles all frozen solid. “They… Everyone makes mistakes. So let’s talk about them. Let’s… let me listen to you. Let me listen.”

  Mark/Joseph’s lips started to quiver. His sadness turned into a smile again. “I never… I never had friends. I always… I wanted them, but they didn’t want me. They never listened. And—and the kids. That—that boy. That boy listened to me. He always listened to me.”

  He hit the side of his head with his left hand again, tears flowing freely down his cheeks.

  “Sam Betts?” Brian asked.

  Mark/Joseph ignored him. “And—and I didn’t mean to make the mistake. I just… I just thought he was my friend. And I only cuddled him. I swear I only cuddled him. I did nothing bad, I… The voices, they do the bad. They always do the bad.”

  Brian peeked behind Mark/Joseph. Tried to figure out if he could knock him over, pin him down with the knife.

  But at the same time, he felt like he was getting somewhere. Making progress.

  “What about… what about the girl?”

  Mark/Joseph frowned. “What girl?”

  “The—the beautiful one. From… from Booths. Last night. In the toilets.”

  Mark/Joseph moved his lips as if working out which girl Brian was referring to. Then he nodded, just once, assertively, and smiled. “The beautiful girl. The beautiful red girl.”

  Brian’s stomach turned. “What did you… what did the voices tell you to do to… with her?”

  Mark/Joseph shook his head. “Voices didn’t tell me anything. I just… I went in the wrong bathroom and found it funny and… and then I saw the beautiful.”

  Brian edged back as slightly as he could and Mark/Joseph didn’t seem to notice. “What… what did you do to her?”

  “I didn’t do a thing,” Mark/Joseph said, shaking his head. “Just… just looked at her. And then the voices told me through the shop ceiling I had to leave so I left because—because they were closing. And I was out too late anyway. But she was beautiful. So beautiful she was my secret. You haven’t told anyone, have you? I can see her again, can’t I?”

  Brian blinked fast. Couldn’t understand Mark/Joseph. “So you didn’t… What happened before you found the girl? What … were the voices there then? Did they make you—?”

  “Too many questions. You said you just listened.”

  Knife pressed up to Brian’s throat again.

  “No, I, just—”

  “I did nothing. Voices did nothing. Never did anything bad. Always did my best to be good. Didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Didn’t mean to…”

  As the knife dug right into Brian’s neck, he knew he should fight back. He was a bloody police officer, after all. A defendant of the law.

  But he was frozen.

  He tried to shuffle back. Shuffle away. Adrenaline coursed through his body, but he was still.

  He’d frozen. At the
worst possible moment, he’d frozen.

  “The voices think it’s time for you to stop listening now,” Mark/Joseph said.

  Brian tensed his fists. Prepared to swing a punch at this psycho. Prepared for the knife to slice his throat open in the process.

  “Adrian. Put the knife down.”

  The voice came from the bottom end of the alleyway. A man’s voice. Quite high-pitched, a southern twang to it.

  Recognition flickered in Mark/Joseph’s eyes. He blinked. Blinked away his tears.

  “Put the knife down, Adrian. I’m here for you now. It’s okay.”

  Mark/Joseph shook. The knife shook in his hand. Brian backed away slightly, the knife still close to his neck.

  “Adrian,” Mark or Joseph or ruddy Adrian mumbled. “He… Adrian. I’m Adrian.”

  The knife dropped from Adrian’s hand. Hit the ground.

  The second it did, Brian pushed him as hard as he could onto his back and held him down.

  As he crouched above him, held his fist above his wackjob face, he heard footsteps. Voices telling him to calm down. Telling him everything was under control.

  He held his fist. Felt his heart pound. Wanted to thump Adrian hard in the face, again and again and again.

  Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and he backed away when he saw it was DI Carter.

  The police that flooded down the alleyway turned Adrian onto his belly. Cuffed him. He didn’t protest. He just mumbled things under his breath. Mumbled things, in a completely different language.

  A man who Brian didn’t recognise in a brown leather jacket and with narrow, black-framed glasses crouched beside Adrian. Whispered a few words of reassurance in his ears. He had short brown hair and was a very slight figure.

  “You okay, Brian?” DI Carter asked.

  Brian just nodded. All he could do. “Who’s this?”

  The glasses-wearing man looked up at Brian. Squinted at him with disapproval, like a teacher might look at a misbehaving student. “This man you chased after is Adrian West,” he said, in his Southern accent. “He’s a patient at the New Blue Brook mental institution. And I’m Jed Green. His social worker.”

  SIXTEEN

  Brian felt like he was living in a blur as he stared through the one-way interview room window at Adrian West.

  He sat at the table with his social worker, Jed Green, beside him. There was another person there too—a dark-haired woman in a suit that Brian could only assume was Adrian West’s lawyer. At the other side of the table, Samantha and Brad asked him questions. Pushed photographs across the table of the CCTV footage, of the bodies.

  Brian knew he should be in there, but he wasn’t thinking straight. Wasn’t thinking right.

  He listened to the footsteps echo past him and walk by the interview room. Smelled coffee and aftershave, but it was all so dulled, all so toned down. The nick on his neck, it throbbed with pain even though he’d nipped down to the hospital to get it plastered up.

  But he still felt the knife there, pressing against it. He still felt himself sitting on the ground, frozen, trapped.

  He licked his dry lips and swallowed a lump of phlegm down. Hungry, but couldn’t eat a thing. He knew he should have acted when that nutjob patient Adrian West first cornered him. He knew he should’ve kicked out, lashed out.

  But at the same time, he saw his own mortality when he’d lay there on the ground. His own mortality was flashing him in the face way more these last couple of years, and way, way more since his heart attack. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could be penned in, cornered, trapped.

  He wasn’t sure how much fight he had left in him.

  “You alright, Inspector?”

  He looked to his left. DC Arif was approaching. It was strange seeing his chubby self out of his office chair, as he stopped beside the window with a chocolate chip croissant in hand and stared through the glass.

  “Yeah,” Brian managed. “I’m alright. Just… just a long day.”

  “Don’t envy you being a beat cop. I mean, I’d love to, like. If my back was good still.”

  DC Arif had joined the force about seven years ago. He’d spent about four years as a beat cop—a pretty good one at that—but then he’d transferred to the offices soon after he moved to the Preston department. And that transfer coincided with a vast widening of DC Arif’s stomach. Not that Brian could talk—he knew the feeling of being a little overweight. Just DC Arif, well. He wasn’t just a little overweight. He was enormous.

  “I know, er… I know now’s probably not a good time—”

  “Yes,” Brian snapped, eager to come across as confident after his ordeal earlier. “Now’s a fucking good time as any.”

  DC Arif licked the croissant flakes from his fingers. “I, er… this bloke. Adrian. We went through all the CCTV and there’s no sign of him entering the bathroom at Booths at any other point in the day. No sign of him at all until nine-thirty, in fact.”

  Brian nodded. Tried to tune himself back into the case, but all he could think about was the knife against his neck, the way he’d frozen, the way he’d relied on someone else to bail him out of a bad situation like he was some product of deus ex machina, some old novelty veteran that needed babysitting.

  “But the girl. Beth Turner. We’ve got her entering at nine.”

  Brian looked at DC Arif. Frowned. “You mean she’s—”

  “Alive, yes. Walks into Booths, looks over her shoulder, heads to the ladies. No one else enters until nine-thirty, when Adrian West enters. He only spends five minutes in there.”

  Arif cleared his throat.

  “Excuse me making assumptions, boss, but that’s a lot of hurt to do in five minutes.”

  Brian felt a weight sinking to the bottom of his stomach. He looked back through the one way glass, saw Adrian sitting there with his shoulders forward, hunched like a scared little boy. Saw his lawyer, his social worker, both arguing his case for him. Beth Turner was alive when she entered Booths at 9 p.m. Friday night. Which meant she hadn’t been kidnapped from that tunnel where Brian thought she had. She wasn’t even anywhere near it. Which means they’d got everything wrong. Something was off. Very off.

  Things that Brian’s mind was too tired to focus on right now.

  “You should get some rest,” DC Arif said.

  Brian spun around. Nerves flared up inside him. “You don’t tell me what I fucking—”

  “You’ve been acting shitty for days now. And Marlow’s hardly taking kindly to you wandering off on another solo mission of yours down an alleyway. I’m just trying to help you, mate. I suggest you go home. Spend some time with Hannah. Then come back here fresh tomorrow. Seriously. You don’t want to bump into Marlow right now, especially not with your…”

  Brian’s eyes narrowed. He tensed his jaw. “With my what?”

  Arif scratched the side of his head. “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, say it. You mean with my past. With my age. And with my condition.”

  Arif sighed. “I don’t mean to—”

  “You know what, I will go home. I will go fucking home. Good luck, Arif. Try not to suffocate on fucking croissants while I’m gone.”

  He barged past Arif, banged into his shoulder. A few other officers around him looked at him, whispered to one another.

  His cheeks boiled as he marched towards the exit door, towards the pouring rain outside, towards the fading late afternoon sun.

  His vision tunnelled, and he still felt that knife pressing against his neck.

  Brian parked just down the road from his house and turned off the engine, turned off all the lights.

  He sat there and stared out into the darkness. Listened to the light patter of rain drop against the roof of the car, making him feel sleepy as he closed his eyes.

  But when he did close his eyes, he still saw himself there on the ground with Adrian West holding the knife to his neck.

  He still saw himself not acting.

  He opened his eyes because those thought
s made his stomach tingle. It wasn’t like him. He knew it wasn’t like him. But since the heart attack, since that reminder of his mortality, he’d become weak. He saw mortality more clearly. Saw it staring him in the face.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket with his shaking hand. Figured he’d browse the internet. Browse it to distract himself. Because he needed something to distract himself right now. Anything to distract himself.

  And his usual distraction, his home life with Hannah, that wasn’t a distraction anymore. It couldn’t be. Not now Hannah was pregnant.

  He felt more knotting in his stomach and he wondered if he’d ever get these shitty thoughts out of his head.

  He had two missed calls. Both from Hannah. One at around three-thirty, another half an hour ago at six. He knew he was in the wrong. In the wrong for going silent on her when she’d told him she was pregnant. In the wrong for getting up extra early for work this morning, leaving without saying goodbye, or even making her morning coffee.

  He didn’t know why he was acting the way he was. Just that he was scared. Scared of this case. Scared of what happened to Sam Betts, Beth Turner.

  But mostly, he was scared of being a dad. Scared of bringing another Davey into this world. Because he’d failed Davey. He’d failed Davey way too many times in his life. He couldn’t be a letdown to another kid. He just couldn’t.

  He turned over. Reached onto the backseat. Saw the shopping bag. Saw the bottle of vodka inside it.

  Saw the pack of razor blades underneath.

  He felt a longing. A longing to turn the knotting in his stomach to real pain. Real pain on his body, to let it all out. It was bottled up like a fizzy drink. He was bubbling over. So close to bubbling over. And the only thing that could help him was a release. A release he hadn’t had for so, so long.

  He reached into the bag, heart pounding more and more as he did. He grabbed the pack of razors. Turned it around in his hands. Went to open it up.

  And then he tossed them to the other side of the car. Threw the bottle onto the other seat as well.

  He leaned against the steering wheel and he covered his eyes with his hands. His breathing got quivery. A coldness worked its way up the back of his neck.