‘I was studying chemical engineering, and I had a few demons to put to rest so I was seeing a counsellor.’
Maggie didn’t want to interrupt him, but she knew he had missed out a huge chunk, and she wanted the whole story.
‘What kind of demons – something from your childhood?’
Duncan raised his head and looked at her. He understood her so well, and he must have been able to see in her eyes that she knew something. He hesitated.
‘Duncan, I know your name. I know your birthday. And you know that I can find out anything I want to. So stop messing about, for God’s sake.’ She omitted to mention that she didn’t know his surname.
Duncan’s lips tightened, and she knew he wasn’t happy to be telling her this.
‘How do you know about my name?’ he asked.
‘You were in care. I don’t need to explain to you how I know. You need to tell me the truth. Why were you in care, and for how long.’
Duncan’s eyes narrowed and she could see he was wondering how much she knew.
‘I told you my mother was ill. She was ill for years. When she had to go into hospital, I had to go and stay with a lady called Pat. I didn’t mention it because nobody’s proud of being in care. There wasn’t anybody else, you see. Just me and Mum. That’s why it nearly killed me when she died. I was never with Pat for long – only a few weeks at a time – and I went home when Mum came out of hospital. I shouldn’t have gone to university really, but she insisted. She wanted me to have everything in life, so social services arranged for a nurse to call in every day while I was away. But I know I shouldn’t have gone.’
Maggie could feel his pain and had to stop herself from going to him. But she needed to pull him away from talk of his mother.
‘Let’s get back to the counsellor you mentioned,’ she said. ‘What happened there?’
‘The people at the university knew about my mother and the fact that I was having to live with a lot of uncertainty about the future, so I was allocated an adviser. He was good. He helped me to face things and helped me to meet – sort of – people in a similar position. Chat rooms on the Internet were just getting going, and he introduced me to one where people talked through their problems. It was anonymous, and it helped me. I was given a room in the halls of residence for fifty-two weeks of the year and treated as a kid coming out of care because basically I had nowhere to go when my mum was in hospital – no other family to turn to. I was a bit of a loner, so chatting to people online was a lifesaver. You really have no idea, Mags. Everybody has somebody. But for huge chunks of time I didn’t. I had nobody. I felt like a shadow – as if I had no substance of my own.’
The pain Maggie was feeling for the man sitting in front of her was real, but it was as if she were listening to a person she didn’t know well. A friend’s husband, perhaps. She felt detached. How had all of this stayed hidden?
‘Then in my second year I started to see a girl. I’d been out with a few, but I didn’t have any money and could barely afford to buy them a drink, so I’d mainly had one-night stands. Then I met Tamsin. She was pretty and funny, and didn’t seem to care much about where we went. She just wanted sex – lots of it – so we ended up at mine.’
He looked at Maggie. ‘Do you mind if I get a glass of water, Mags. I’ve barely spoken in the last few days, and my throat’s dry.’
‘I’ll get it. You carry on talking.’
Maggie went into the bathroom and found a plastic cup inside a polythene bag. She ripped it open as she listened.
‘I thought we had an exclusive relationship, and it was going well, but one night after a late lecture I saw her walking along the other side of the road. I shouted to her, but there were lots of people milling around and she didn’t hear me. She was all dressed up, so I followed her. She went into one of the staff car parks. It was pretty dark by then but I saw a flash of headlights and she gave a little wave. I thought somebody must be giving her a lift somewhere and was about to leave, but I wanted to see who it was. There was nobody else about so I crouched down behind one of the few remaining cars and waited for them to drive out. But they didn’t. I had a peep after a few minutes, and they were still there – in the car.’
Maggie returned to the bedroom and handed Duncan a glass of lukewarm water – the best she could do.
‘To cut a long story short, she was giving one of the lecturers a blow job. I was devastated.’
Duncan fell silent and sipped at his water.
‘I thought she loved me and that we had something special. When you don’t have anybody, it hits much harder if somebody lets you down.’
Maggie tried to assess how it must have felt to be that kid with no family, few friends and nobody to turn to. He thought he had found somebody to love. She realised she was thinking of this boy as Michael. None of it had anything to do with her Duncan.
‘What happened afterwards?’ she asked, fearing that there was more to come.
‘I went to see my counsellor. I told him what had happened and how I felt. I was so hurt. So angry that she would throw away what we had. I think I probably said that I wanted to kill her, but people say that all the time, don’t they?’
He looked straight at Maggie as he spoke, his eyes slightly narrowed as if to gauge her reaction. She managed to keep her face impassive. He was right. How often had she said ‘I could have killed him’ about something trivial?
‘What did your counsellor advise?’
‘He suggested another chat room. He said it was designed for people who felt like me, who needed an outlet for their anger. It was a private site – you know, not indexed and only accessible if you knew how to get in. I suppose you’d call it the dark web nowadays. Anyway, it was a place where I could express my feelings.’
Maggie was puzzled. She knew about the dark web of course, but generally thought about it in terms of pornography and the buying and selling of drugs.
‘What kind of site was it?’ she asked.
‘A fantasy site,’ Duncan said, his dark eyes fixed on hers as if they were boring into her to read her thoughts. ‘A fantasy murder site.’
The silence in the hotel room was claustrophobic in its intensity. Maggie stared at her husband, and he stared right back as if daring her to comment. She wasn’t sure for a moment that she had heard him correctly. Did that mean what she thought? People went on there to fantasise about committing murder? It was as twisted as anything she had ever come across.
The tension snapped as the room phone rang.
‘Shit,’ Maggie muttered. ‘Does anybody know you’re here?’
Duncan shook his head.
‘Could they have traced your van, like I did?’
‘I don’t see how they would know the registration number.’
‘Okay, it’s best if I answer this,’ Maggie said, guessing who it would be.
She picked the phone up.
‘Yes?’ she said, trying to sound as if she were in control. ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you, Mr Trainer. It’s okay, I’ve heard from the police. They called my mobile. I’m going to take my client to them when we’ve finished our meeting. He’ll be checking out. Yes, I’m fine, but thank you so much for your concern, Mr Trainer.’
At the mention of the police, Duncan had pushed himself to his feet, panic spreading across his face. Maggie waved him down, ended the call and hung up.
‘It’s okay. There are no police, but when we’ve finished we’re going to have to move you somewhere else. The guy downstairs thinks you’re a criminal.’
Duncan’s eyes asked, Is that what you think? but Maggie gave nothing away.
She took a deep breath. ‘Now tell me what sort of sick fuck of a counsellor tells a disturbed kid to go to a fantasy murder site? What the hell is a fantasy murder site, anyway?’
Duncan shrugged as if it were nothing.
‘Exactly what you might think. It’s a fantasy site. You go on and you talk about how you would kill somebody and why. Other people make suggestion
s. There’s even a board that tells you how to commit the perfect murder. But it’s just fantasy. It helps get it all out of your system.’
Maggie had no words. It wasn’t just fantasising about wanting somebody dead; people actually discussed methods of committing murder. She didn’t think this could get any worse, but there was more and Maggie knew it. This website was the most macabre thing she had ever heard of, but if that was all it was, Duncan wouldn’t have mentioned it. She waited.
‘One guy started to chat to me and suggested we go into a private side room. His name was Samil – well, that was his pseudonym. We all had them. The only people who could access the private room were people who were specifically invited, so to start with it was just me, Samil, and the site administrator – Invictus, he called himself.’
It all sounded so juvenile with the silly names, but no doubt they had some sinister meaning.
‘Then Samil suggested that maybe we could help each other out. He had been fantasising about killing his stepmother so she didn’t inherit all his father’s money. He hated her. He said he would kill Tamsin for me if I would kill his stepmother. I thought he was joking.’
Duncan had stopped looking at Maggie again. He was clutching the plastic cup between his hands, squeezing it so that it cracked and staring into its empty depths. She wanted to scream at him, but she had to keep quiet and let him continue or she might never learn the truth.
‘He didn’t know who I was any more than I knew who he was. At least he didn’t know then. All we knew was that we both lived in Manchester. He said that Tamsin’s murder would have to take place when I was away so I couldn’t be implicated. Then Invictus added a suggestion. He said we needed to make it look like it had nothing to do with Tamsin herself – that it was the start of a serial killing spree.’
Maggie gasped. She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation in an ordinary, rather drab, cheap hotel bedroom. She felt hot and the room was airless. Without speaking to Duncan she walked over to the window and tried to open it, but it would only budge about an inch and the gap did nothing to improve the oppressive atmosphere. She banged her open palm against the window frame.
‘How many did he suggest should be killed?’ she asked, hearing a clipped, brittle edge to her voice. She realised that without conscious thought she fallen into the role of professional lawyer. This was no longer Duncan, her husband; this was Michael, a man who had somehow become involved in something evil, and it was her job to get him off. She needed to hide behind that persona, which suddenly felt like the only way she could survive.
‘Three.’ Duncan’s voice had become quiet, as if he almost couldn’t believe this himself. ‘Invictus said it was a powerful number and would ensure that nobody was ever caught. It would be even better if all the victims looked similar – this would cause confusion on so many levels. I never thought they meant it, though.’
‘What in God’s name did you think they meant, Duncan? Did you actually think at all?’
He looked at her then, his eyes wide.
‘I thought it was a game – how to commit the perfect murder, you know. I thought we would do all the planning, and then say, “Yes, it would have worked.” But Invictus kept adding suggestions, and Samil was getting excited about it.’
It sounded to Maggie as if this Invictus got a vicarious thrill from planning such things. Maybe he hadn’t believed it would ever happen either.
‘I was a member of the university cycling team,’ Duncan continued, ‘and they decided that the first murder should coincide with a trip. Invictus said he thought he might be able to help with the selection of the first girl, and he would communicate with Samil about it separately. It was better if I didn’t know. All I needed to do was post Tamsin’s details on the site and leave the rest to them.’
There was a long pause.
‘I never meant anything to happen, Maggie. It was just like an online game. Even Josh plays those.’
‘Don’t you dare equate what you did with a game of fucking Clash of the Clans.’
Duncan had the grace to look away, but Maggie hadn’t finished.
‘If it was fantasy, why didn’t you make somebody up?’
‘Why would I do that?’
He looked genuinely puzzled, and Maggie shook her head to clear her mind. She knew there were fantasy porn sites out there and that people shared fantasies about real people, but could Duncan really have been so gullible as to think this was helping him to redirect his anger?
‘Did you go on your cycling trip,’ Maggie asked, her speech staccato.
‘Of course, because I keep telling you I never really thought it would happen. I knew that Samil had recruited a helper. Invictus had suggested it. He said it made it easier to lure the victims in, and Samil needed a killing site – somewhere safe so they could take their time over it and be safe.’
‘And you knew all this? You went along with it?’
‘I thought it was all part of the fantasy. Do you think I wanted any of this to happen?’
‘What did you expect? You had given them the girl’s details, the dates when you would be away. You still thought it was fantasy?’
Duncan didn’t look at her, and Maggie didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
‘But it wasn’t, was it?’ she asked.
‘No.’
Maggie jumped off the bed and rushed to the bathroom.
48
Maggie stayed locked in the bathroom for ten minutes. She couldn’t breathe. She needed to be out of that airless room and away from Duncan. She leaned heavily on the washbasin, head down, wondering if she was going to be sick, and forced herself to take long, deep breaths.
If she could continue to convince herself that this was Michael she was hearing about, and not the Duncan who had sat up for hours nursing toddler Josh when he had an ear infection, or who had lain on the rug pretending to be poorly while Lily played nurse making Daddy better, she could deal with it. She could assign the actions and behaviours she had just heard about to a man she didn’t know.
Finally she opened the door. Duncan hadn’t moved, but he looked up at her, trying to gauge what she was thinking. She looked away, not wanting him to see how shaken she was. If he knew how she was feeling he might stop talking.
In the confines of the small bedroom she was going to have to step over his feet to get back to the bed and she didn’t want to touch him. The room suddenly seemed darker than ever, although she knew it was her imagination.
‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I know it’s not a nice story, but you have to understand all of that to understand the rest.’
There was one thing she had to ask him before he told her any more. ‘This man – Samil. Did he ever call himself Sam?’
‘What? Why?’ asked Duncan.
‘Just answer the bloody question. Did he ever call himself Sam?’ She could hear her voice shaking and fought for control.
‘Sometimes, but why is it important?’
‘Because a man spoke to Josh yesterday. He asked if he was missing his daddy, and he said to say hi. From Sam!’
Maggie couldn’t look at Duncan. She was terrified that his expression would fail to show the horror she was feeling. She needn’t have worried, though, because he had turned his head away from her towards the door, muttering ‘Oh, shit.’
She wanted to rush at him and throttle him for putting their son in such jeopardy, but first she had to know it all and she knew there was more to come.
‘You need to carry on with your story. I need to know what happened next. When did you realise that this was no fantasy?’
‘Samil said I should go ahead with the cycling trip at the beginning of May. I think it was North Wales the first time.’
Maggie felt her body twitch. The first time?
‘He said he had recruited somebody, and they were going to make Tamsin pay for what she’d done.’
Duncan’s voice became even quieter and Maggie had to strain to hear his words. ‘The
news came on the day we were due to head back from the trip. A girl, a student at the university, had been found dead on Pomona Island.’ Duncan raised his eyes to Maggie’s and must have seen the confusion there. ‘It’s a strip of wasteland right in the heart of Manchester.’ He looked away again, and she wondered why he didn’t want her to see his eyes.
‘I remember feeling sick,’ he said. ‘I thought I was going to throw up in front of the whole cycling team. Somebody other than me asked the question: “Who was it?” The lecturer who was leading the group said, “Sonia Beecham,” and I nearly passed out. I felt the room spinning. Thank God this was some other poor kid. It had nothing to do with me.’
Duncan pushed himself up off the floor and went to the wardrobe opposite the bathroom. He slid the door open and bent down to retrieve a small cardboard box, which he carried back to where he had been sitting and slumped back down the wall. Maggie glanced at the box and knew instantly where it had come from. This had to be the contents of Duncan’s cupboard – his mementos. Settling back down with the box between his knees, he pulled out an old newspaper and handed it to Maggie.
She looked at the picture – a pretty girl with shoulder-length blonde hair and a shy smile. Underneath was an article about the murder and where they had found the body.
‘Before I saw the newspaper, I thought it was just another murder in Manchester. Thank God, it really had all been a fantasy. And then I saw the photograph and I knew. This girl – this Sonia Beecham – was the spitting image of Tamsin. I knew then that they’d followed the instructions on the website from Invictus. This murder was going to be the first of three.’
‘So what did you do?’
Duncan looked down and said nothing. Maggie leapt off the bed and knelt in front of him. She grabbed his head between her open palms and forced him to look at her.
Tom Douglas Box Set 2 Page 54
