by Emmy Ellis
“What does he do, Mummy?”
“Never you mind.”
He blinks the past away. Thinks about his next steps. He’ll add Dirty Girl to the row in the basement, beside the others, and then it will all be over. He can return to how he’s been for the past ten years, never wearing these sorts of clothes again or speaking in this voice.
He doesn’t like this voice.
He doesn’t like it that he’s been forced into the person his mother created. He was never that person, not really, but he had to pretend to be. Just like now.
Another unsavoury female arrives, and from here he thinks it might be Dirty Girl. Same hair length, same thin frame, similar clothes to what she had on when he’d taken her to Blooming Age and put her in the old wing.
Could it be her?
He starts the engine and cruises forward, stopping at the end to make sure his eyes haven’t deceived him. Sadly, they have. She stands beneath a streetlamp, and it’s clear now that it isn’t the slut he wants. Still, he can beckon her over and ask a few questions, see if that throws anything up.
He flashes his headlights, and several filthy creatures stare over, some shielding their eyes from the harsh glare. He dips the beams then waves, hoping one of them will walk across to him.
He’s in luck.
A black-haired tart approaches, reaching his window and smiling, her teeth stained as though she’s on heroin or meth. Or perhaps she eats too much sugar and they’ve rotted. He doesn’t much care. Bad teeth won’t stop her from telling him what he wants to know.
She leans her forearms on the door and pokes her head inside. Her breath smells like mint and something he doesn’t want to think about. She smiles again, and the closeup of the stumps in her mouth has his stomach rolling over.
He clears his throat. “Is Aurora out tonight?” That’s the name Dirty Girl had given him when he’d picked her up last time.
“She isn’t, no.” She cocks her head, and a lock of hair falls from her shoulder to dangle in front of her.
“Do you know when she’ll be out again?” He’s not sure what’s happening now with his shifts. They’ve been given the night off, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have to catch up by working when they usually wouldn’t. Zello can be a hard-hearted bitch when she has a mind.
“I don’t know.” Bad Teeth sighs.
He blinks from the strength of the scent gusting his way and holds back a retch. “I need to see her. It’s important. I have a message from her pimp.” It’s all he can think of to say.
“Oh…” She frowns and pulls back, standing upright and wiping her brow, as though what he’s said brought on a heavy sweat. “I… Oh, Christ. I know where she lives. Will that help?”
“Tell me,” he says, his heartrate spiking. Can it be this easy? Really?
“I don’t know the street name or the number, but I know where it is and would recognise the door if you take me there.”
This isn’t what he wants, but it might be the only chance he has for a while if Zello makes him work one of his usual nights off. “Get in.”
She scoots around the back of the car and plonks herself beside him, closing the door a little too hard.
He doesn’t like that.
“You go back down this road, then take a left,” she says, stabbing the seat belt connector into the slot.
He reverses all the way, not caring if another car should come along. Then he does a three-point turn at the end and noses up to the intersection. Nothing is coming either way, and he’s pleased—he doesn’t need anyone clocking his whereabouts at the moment. He takes the left, then she directs him right, then left again.
Dirty Girl’s street is a bad one, going by the state of the houses, the bricks all chipped, the gardens overrun with copious amounts of rubbish—fridges, a mattress, and even a bloody Asda shopping trolley.
“Just there,” she says, pointing at a house with an outside light on that bleeds yellow beside a scabby green door, the paint peeling, especially around the handle. “I went there once for a threesome. She has a room there. Well, a bedsit really.”
He studies the windows, wondering which room Dirty Girl’s is or if she even has one at the front. “Go and get her.”
Bad Teeth climbs out, huffing, and says, “You’re going to pay me for my time, aren’t you? I’m losing custom by doing this.”
“Yes, yes.” He waves her away, thinking twenty quid should do it.
If she wants more, she can whistle for it.
She leaves the car door open, and he’s grateful for the cooler air floating in. She walks to the green door, knocking loudly. No lights are on, but that doesn’t mean no one’s in. Dirty Girl could be at the back of the house. He hopes.
Time passes, in reality only around a minute or so, but to him it seems like an hour. Frustration builds, and he takes a deep breath to steady his anger. He can’t bear to look at Bad Teeth standing on the step, knowing what she does for a living. It’s creating a maelstrom of unsettled emotions inside him, and memories of the past threaten to crowd his mind. So he glances at the street to check for anyone out and about. It’s clear of witnesses, and that soothes him somewhat.
He thinks about seeing Dirty Girl again. Can he control the impulse to kill her immediately, in front of her fellow filthy colleague—if they can be classed as such? Dirty Girl won’t recognise him—he doesn’t look the same as the times she’s already seen him, so he’s safe in that she will probably get in his car and drive away with him to make a sale, just like she’d been prepared to walk so far to Blooming Age without querying where they were off to, so eager was she to score some money.
It’s the root of all evil, that.
Bad Teeth turns and looks at him, waving to catch his attention. He sighs out a breath of irritation and gestures for her to come back. She returns to the car and gets in.
“She’s not there,” she says, stating the sodding obvious.
“So I see.” What should he do? Sit here all evening until Dirty Girl comes back? Or…
He chooses ‘or’. It means he can get rid of some tension if he does that.
“Never mind,” he says. “Shut the door and buckle up. I’ll use you instead.”
She smiles at that and does as she’s told, and he peels away from the kerb, drawing to the end of the street and taking note of the name of it. The number on the green door—fifty-seven—is imprinted in his brain. He’ll never forget where she lives now.
“What do you fancy then?” his passenger asks, twirling her hair around a finger topped with a ragged, bitten nail.
He doesn’t fancy anything other than what he has in mind but doesn’t want to tell her that. “Just a basic service, that’s what I want.”
“What, like a blow job or something?”
She’d have a difficult time giving him one of those, but he doesn’t tell her that either.
“Or something.” He hides a smile.
He heads for home, thinking of how skinning her won’t take so long because she’s a tiny person. This is pleasing, and he feels a little better than when they’d been outside Dirty Girl’s house. The anger is replaced with single-minded determination, him focusing on what he needs to do. He can’t have this woman beside him walking around knowing he’s looking for Dirty Girl. It’ll lead to all sorts of madness if she tells anyone and says he drives a taxi. It wouldn’t be long then before the police came knocking at his door when it’s discovered Dirty Girl is missing.
Because she will be at some point.
“Where are you taking me?” Bad Teeth asks.
“My house.”
“Oh.” She moves her hand to undo her seat belt but leaves it secured. “I don’t do houses. Sorry. Can you drop me off here? And you still owe me for losing money going to Aurora’s, remember.”
“I’ll drop you off up here then,” he says, abandoning plan A and moving to B, driving towards the abandoned warehouses behind the town centre shops. If she’s going to be funny about things
, he’s better off getting rid of her there.
“Thanks. Fifty quid, right?” She unclips her belt as they approach his destination.
Fifty quid. She’s got to be joking.
He doesn’t answer, just swerves onto the concrete outside the warehouses and parks in a dark corner. His headlight beams splash on the crumbling bricks. He switches them off.
These days, the warehouse windows are boarded up. A while ago, they had been left as open spaces, no glass, and the homeless dossed down inside. No one should be around now their former digs are unavailable, so he’ll be safe to do what he fancies.
There’s an alley that leads to the town, and Clarks shoe shop is to one side. He hates Clarks shoes. None of his friends had them when he’d been at school, and they’d taken the piss that his mother had bought them for him. They were ugly and clunky, terribly out of fashion back then, and the reminder of that shop grates on his nerves.
That’s all right. It’ll fuel the fire burning a hole in his gut.
He gets out of the car at the same time she does and makes a show of pulling money out of his trouser pocket. He thumbs through the notes while she advances towards him. With fifty pounds in hand, he holds her payment out. As she reaches to take it, he grips her wrist with his free hand and stuffs the cash away so fast she barely has time to squeal.
He punches her in the face repeatedly until she staggers backwards, her arse hitting the concrete, her torso reclining in slow motion. The thud when her skull connects with the ground sends him to that place where he never wanted to go again, changing him from who he’s strived to be the last ten years into something…other.
Mrs Roberts has a lot to answer for.
He kicks the prostitute in the head, pain shooting up his big toe, fuck it, and she rolls onto her side, groaning and crying, hands over her ears. He has no sympathy for her. Reaching into his back pocket, he draws his knife out and slits her throat, the skin opening like a goddamn pitta bread, blood surging out, a geyser. Then he pokes her with his foot so she’s on her back, and he kneels, hovering his face close to hers so he can watch the life fade from her eyes by the light of his phone screen.
It’s beautiful.
Once her soul has gone, he stands and selects his torch app, flashing it over his front to check for blood. For God’s sake, he’s only just cleaned his other car, and now he’ll have to scrub the taxi—blood spatter soaks into his shirt, and he’s a fool if he thinks none of it will get on the driver’s seat. He steps back, his foot going down into a puddle-filled hole where the council haven’t bothered filling the cracks and craters in the old, wrecked car park. The water reaches his ankles.
He lifts his foot then kneels again to wash the knife, his crimson-covered hand, his face, and even though the water’s filthy, he doesn’t care. He strips his shirt off and plunges it into the puddle until the blood is nothing but a pink stain, then uses the material to wipe his stomach where the red stuff got through.
Home beckons, and he gathers his shirt, phone, and blade then drives away with them on his lap, satisfied with the night’s work. He valets the taxi in his garage, and bed is only an hour or so away. He’s tired, worn out to his bones from the exertion, the emotion, and he deserves to shut his eyes and wake up tomorrow with only one more job to do.
Find Dirty Girl.
Chapter Fourteen
Up early after a surprisingly solid night’s sleep, Tracy was raring to go. Cracking on with this case was at the forefront of her mind, but she went through the mail in her office to get it out of her way first. CCTV was being checked on the roads that led to the main one outside Blooming Age, and the other tasks they’d discussed last night had been distributed to the team. Everyone had been determined to find this killer quickly when they’d had their briefing at eight this morning.
She finished the mail and quickly typed out what she’d done yesterday so she didn’t forget by the time she had to write out her official reports. She should fill them out each evening, but who the fuck had an hour or more spare for that when an investigation was in full swing? Then she bit the bullet and found a therapist in the online version of the Yellow Pages before she bottled out. She selected a woman who had several good reviews, one patient raving about how their whole life had changed after just three sessions.
That suited Tracy no end.
She navigated to the therapist’s website and found a photograph showing a face belonging to a woman Tracy estimated to be in her mid-forties. Poised, with styled brown hair, there was more of a barrister look about her than anything.
She’d do.
Tracy made the call to book an appointment, her voice trembling, which pissed her off. The receptionist gave her tomorrow at six in the evening. Tracy just hoped she’d get there with such a small margin after her shift finished. She put the phone in the dock, her hand shaking. Eyes closed, she told herself it was the best thing, what she was doing, actively seeking help to end the nightmare her life had been since she was a small kid.
You can do this. You can.
She opened her eyes at a knock on the door. “Come in.” Post scooped off the desk and shoved into a drawer, she smiled at Nada. “What can I do for you?”
Nada stood in front of the desk. “In all the faff yesterday when we shared what we’d found out, I forgot to mention where Irene Roberts’ old neighbour lives—where Irene used to live before she went to Blooming Age. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to go and speak to her yourself or with any other neighbours, because a certain person might well know something that will help us…”
Tracy narrowed her eyes. “That sounds like you have a big revelation for me.”
“You could say that, boss.”
“Come on then. Where does she live?”
Nada cringed. “Robin’s Way.”
“What?” Tracy shook her head. “I had enough of that bloody street from the other case.” She sighed. “But, yes, you’re right. Mrs Jones—fuck me sideways, really?—will probably have some snippet or other we can use, even though she claimed she isn’t nosy. What number are we talking for the other neighbour?”
“Eighty-four.”
“Okay. I suppose that can be the first stop for me and Damon today. He will be pleased…” The last was wrapped up in sarcasm with a shiny bow of derision. He wouldn’t be too chuffed, but if going to see the old Jones bitch meant getting information, they’d have to grin and bear it, although grinning was a bit too much to ask. “Right, is that all you wanted to tell me?”
“Yes, boss. Sorry I forgot.”
Tracy waved the apology away. “It’s fine. If you’d told me last night, I’d have wanted to go around there then, so it’s a good job you didn’t.” On second thought, maybe it would have been better. She wouldn’t have seen Lisa. Wouldn’t have got those bloody texts. Still, there was nothing she could do about it now. You couldn’t change the past.
More’s the pity.
“I’ll be getting on now then.” Nada smiled and left.
Tracy buzzed to Damon’s desk phone in the incident room. “Guess where we’re going?”
“God. Where?”
“To see our old pal.” She fought back a smile.
“We don’t have any pals here yet.”
She imagined him frowning. “Aww, yes we do. Have you forgotten Hilda?”
“Bloody Jones?”
She barked out laughter. “That’s the one.”
“What do we need to see her for? Look, is this one of your rare jokes? Because if it is, it isn’t funny.”
“Sadly not. Robin’s Way—it’s where Irene Roberts used to live.”
“Blimey. That street…”
“I know. So this is your five-minute warning.”
“Righty-oh. Shit…”
Tracy went for a quick wee, and while washing her hands, she stared at herself in the mirror and again contemplated dying her hair. That brought Lisa to mind. Why the hell she’d gone for purple was anyone’s guess. Mind you, it was so different
from the black, and with those glasses she’d chosen, it was doubtful Damon would recognise her now. Tracy supposed she should be thankful Lisa had taken her advice on board. At least she’d done as she’d been told that time.
She shook her head to erase her sister from her mind, dried her hands, and met Damon in the incident room. Addressing the team, she said, “Anything to report yet?”
Erica swivelled her chair to face Tracy. “Nothing on CCTV so far. We started earlier in the evening, from six, so there’s a fair bit to get through.”
“Yeah, my eyes are crossing,” Tim said, scratching the back of his ear.
Tracy nodded to acknowledge she’d heard them. “Alastair, anything from you, or are you still nursing a sore head?”
He cleared his throat and blushed as everyone roared. “Nothing yet, boss. And my head’s much better, thank you for asking.”
Tracy grinned. “Lara?”
“I’m going through the old records again, checking every entry in the seventies regarding sex workers, then I’m passing the names on to Nada.”
“Okay, thanks. You could ask Winter for some help on that. He’s got some logs he kept. Let him know I sent you, all right?”
Lara nodded.
“So, Nada, you’ll be trying to chase these women up, yes?” Tracy cocked her head.
“Yes, boss. I’ll be following up marriage records and the like to see if they’re known by different names now. Damon was helping me with that—you found a couple of them already, didn’t you?” she said to him.
“Yes,” he said. “The info’s on my desk.”
“I’ll take over contacting them, shall I?” Nada asked.
“If you would for now, thanks. We’re off to speak to Hilda Jones.” Tracy grimaced.
“Not that nasty one we dealt with before, surely?” Tim asked.
“The very same, so wish us luck.” Tracy walked to the door. “Keep up the good work, guys. I appreciate you all.” She was greeted with a few shocked expressions—she rarely gave praise. Wouldn’t want them thinking she was a pushover.
