Killing Time

by Mark Roberts

  Marta fell still, staring hard into the mirror, and drew a deep breath through her nose.

  Riley stood behind her, placed her hands on her shoulders, turned her round and wrapped her arms around her.

  Marta let out a stuttering and laboured breath.

  ‘Let it out, Marta, let it all out!’

  The scream that she let out sounded too loud and intense to come from such a frail body. And it went on and on, dissolving into sobbing that subsided into a silence that was as deep as it was dark and filled with a horde of faceless demons.

  15

  11.06 am

  Raymond Dare sat between his friends CJ and Buster, staring in mutual silence at the plasma television mounted on the wall of his mother’s living room. On-screen, behind a vicious barbed-wire fence, a camera panned across a line of emaciated and harrowed faces, eyes stamped with horror and lost in terror.

  Raymond turned left and right, made eye contact with CJ and Buster.

  ‘The fucking joke of it, Raymond,’ said CJ, ‘is that none of this Holocaust shit ever actually happened in the real world.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that,’ said Raymond, smiling as the footage unfolded and German civilians from a village near the death camp were forced to dig up the dead.

  ‘All these films were propaganda, made by the fucking commie bastard Russians to make them look good and the Germans who were defending democracy look like shite!’ Buster spoke with infectious confidence.

  Raymond heard the creaking of a floorboard near the top of the stairs and recognised his older brother’s footstep, a sound that split his brain in half.

  ‘Right, get up, lads!’ said Raymond, with mounting urgency.

  CJ and Buster followed Raymond to the double-glazed door leading out into the garden.

  ‘Fucking Jack,’ said CJ, stepping out into the garden after Buster.

  As Raymond slid the door open, he said, ‘Get out through the back gate. I’ll call you when he’s not here!’ He shivered in the cold air as he shut the door after his friends, softly as it connected with the plastic frame, so that no one could hear.

  *

  Jack’s footsteps came down the stairs. Raymond hurried to the couch and changed to an MTV channel. Raymond muted the sound for a moment, listened to Jack taking a diversion into the kitchen and Jasmine barking with delight at the arrival of her master. He unmuted the sound and did his best to make a show of being engrossed in the music.

  The sound of his brother’s pure white pit bull terrier sparked a vision of her, bloodshot eyes staring at him, teeth bared and muscular legs ready to pounce. Fear invaded him, sickness followed as an ever-present rage simmered beneath his skin.

  As the living room door opened and Jack stepped into the centre of the room, Raymond Dare looked up at his brother who took the remote from him and turned the television off.

  From the other side of the door, his mother spoke as she walked from the stairs to the front door.

  ‘Jack, remember what you said you’d do!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ replied Jack. ‘It’s just about to happen. I’ll message you.’ When the front door closed, he asked. ‘What are you watching on TV, Raymond?’

  ‘This music channel.’

  ‘Right. When I was coming down the stairs I heard you moving around all of a sudden.’ Raymond stared at his brother’s feet. ‘OK, no response, fine. So, what’s this I hear about you dealing weed to ten- and eleven-year-olds on Otterspool Promenade?’

  ‘Honest to God, Jack...’

  ‘By the skateboard park, just inside Otterspool Park, to be precise.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘I just do. What’s this, Raymond?’ He shook the yellow and white box in his hand and the contents banged against cardboard, a small sound that erupted in Raymond’s head like an explosion in a glassworks. Jack opened the box, took out four empty foil trays, and held the first one up in the air. ‘Look at them, Raymond! Look at them!’

  One by one, Jack showed the foils.

  ‘All the Risperdal tablets have been popped from the foils, but you haven’t been taking them, have you, Raymond?’

  ‘I haven’t. Somebody threw them away.’

  Jack laughed bitterly. ‘There are three of us in this house. You. Me. Mum.’

  ‘It wasn’t me threw them away.’

  ‘So, are you telling me that Mum put them down the toilet? Are you telling me I put them down the toilet?’

  ‘Maybe, yeah.’

  ‘That’s right, Raymond. I put them down the toilet because Mum told me to. Is that what you’re going to say next? Me and Mum ganged up to withdraw your medication from you. You really are off your head! You put them down the toilet, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’

  Raymond looked at him as if peering through a cloud, a look that told Jack he’d hit the bullseye.

  ‘I don’t... I don’t remember doing it...’

  ‘Why did you do it?’ pressed Jack.

  After a painful silence, Raymond said, ‘I’m feeling really well.’

  ‘You don’t look well to me.’ Jack looked at the box. ‘Six milligrams, Raymond, that’s a very heavy dose of anti-psychotic medication. The doctors started you off at a conservative one milligram, then two, three, four, five, six. Six did the trick. And you were feeling well because I was giving you the pills. Then your cognitive therapist at Broad Oak insisted you take responsibility for administering your own medication, and you stopped taking them. I’ve been watching you sliding down the slippery bank ever since.’

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll take my medication.’

  ‘You can’t today. You’ve flushed it all down the pan. And you stopped going to Broad Oak for your therapy. Don’t lie. The medic spoke to Mum. Three months you’ve missed.’

  Raymond opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘No, shut your mouth and listen. You’re going back in to therapy, and I’m going to take charge of your medication, and I don’t care what your therapist says. Mental note to self. Bin off the therapist and insist on a new one. I’ve made an appointment for you with the GP, tomorrow at 4 pm, and I’m coming in with you, no argument. You’d better get that into your soul.’

  ‘Who’s the appointment with?’

  ‘Doctor Salah,’ replied Jack.

  ‘That fucking bald Paki...’

  ‘Cut that talk out right now. He’s not from Pakistan, he’s from Egypt, ignorant.’ Jack put the foils back in the box and tossed it to Raymond. ‘Read the information sheet inside. It might remind you how serious your condition is.’

  Jack took a box of matches from his pocket.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Raymond.

  ‘I’m going to check up on a job I’m doing in the back garden. I’ll be back in a minute. There’s something else we need to talk about.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to know what you were doing last night, Raymond. And I want to know who you were doing it with. And you’d better not lie to me. Get that into your soul.’

  16

  11.28 am

  As Clay walked up the stairs of 682 Picton Road, she called, ‘Terry, it’s me!’

  The skin on her arms puckered as the fan behind her poured cold air at her back, and she noticed how much the smell of smoke and cooked flesh had lessened.

  ‘We’re in here, with the bodies.’

  Clay stepped into the bedroom and looked at the intriguing graffiti on the wall.

  ‘It’s looking a lot cleaner. Thank you both,’ said Clay.

  She scrutinised the graffiti, which was now blurred and distorted.

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ said Mason. ‘If you’re looking for a very thorough cleaner, Pricey’s your man. I went through the rest of the flat while he cleaned.’

  ‘Anything?’

  He handed her a black address book. Clay flicked through it, saw that most of the names and places in it were Polish.

  She looked at the graffiti, a series of three concentric circ
les, black at the centre and another circle in the middle with a crowning circumference. Within the circles were dark, crooked symmetrical lines penning in chunks of empty space.

  ‘I’m sorry for the distortion,’ said Price. ‘I used a Q-Tip to clean the wall around the graffiti but, even though I’m working with heavily diluted trisodium phosphate, the wallpaper’s absorbent and it’s sucked the cleaning fluid into the picture on the wall.’

  Clay looked to the window and read the graffiti beneath it. ‘Killing Time Is Here Embrace It. Any more messages like this, Terry?’

  ‘None,’ he replied, showing her the image on his iPhone of the black globe before and after cleaning.

  ‘I’d like you to send these images to Riley, Stone, Hendricks and Cole, everyone directly involved. Ask if this symbol means anything to anyone. I’ll ask Barney Cole to start digging into what it is and what it signifies. OK. Any thoughts?’

  ‘Whoever’s done this,’ said Mason, ‘must’ve been acting in a hurry. We’ve been speculating. We reckon they’ve used a card template with an ink roller and a pad, or maybe even a spray paint. If they’d painted it freehand, they’d still be here now.’

  ‘Are you ready for the mortuary technicians to take the bodies?’ asked Clay.

  ‘I’d appreciate more time in this room and the others, Eve. Just to double-check everything, make sure we haven’t missed anything.’

  Mason pointed towards the criss-crossed and charred men, a ghoulish pair of Siamese Twins. ‘How are they going to be parted?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea, Terry. I’ve never seen anything quite like this.’

  As Clay scrutinised the central place where the bodies were joined, her iPhone rang out.

  ‘Hi, Barney, what’s happening back at the ranch?’

  ‘You’d better get here as quickly as you can, Eve.’ The excitement in Barney Cole’s voice was infectious.

  ‘What’s happening, Barney?’

  ‘Lucy Bell’s shown up at reception.’

  Clay shot towards the stairs. ‘Where is she now?’ She rushed down the stairs, passed the fan’s turning blade and towards the muddy light of the world outside the house of death.

  ‘Interview Suite 1.’

  At the bottom of the stairs, Clay said, ‘Call Bill Hendricks and ask him to sit with her until I get there. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, sooner if I can. How’s she presenting?’

  ‘Half-detached, half-anxious, back and forth.’

  Clay ran across the frozen pavement, directly into a fresh band of sharp, diagonal snow, thinking, Lucy Bell, half-detached, half-anxious, back and forth like a human pendulum.

  17

  11.28 am

  Riley could hear voices and footsteps coming towards Marta Ondřej’s hospital room. Homing in on their voices, she identified one as Marta’s mother, Verka. Two women came into sight through the glass wall of Marta’s room – Verka and Sergeant Samantha Green from the family liaison team. Green placed her hand on Verka’s arm to stop her in her tracks.

  Verka had a handkerchief pressed to her face and her eyes were red from weeping.

  ‘Hang on a second, Kate,’ said Riley. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

  Outside Marta’s room, Riley introduced herself. ‘My name’s Detective Sergeant Gina Riley. I’m looking after Marta.’

  ‘I want to see her now.’ Streaks of mascara ran down Verka’s cheeks and her eyes were raw.

  ‘Soon, Verka. We need to know. What language does Marta speak?’

  ‘Little bits of Czech. Little bits of Roma. A lot of words no one understands.’

  That’s why they let her go, thought Riley.

  ‘OK, Verka. I’ve got something to tell you, something I want you to think about when you go to the toilet down there to wash your face. I don’t want you going in there looking all cried out.’

  ‘I understand. I’ll clean myself up.’

  ‘When she was in captivity, the person or people who held her captive cut her hair off.’

  ‘Her hair? Much off?’

  ‘Pretty much all of it. When you first go in there you mustn’t react. You’ve got to keep your face straight. She saw herself in the mirror and she was hysterical.’

  ‘I will try my best.’

  ‘You’re going to have to help us get through to her. She’s proving hard to reach at the moment.’

  ‘Marta is hard to reach, Detective Riley.’

  Riley watched Verka follow the signs for the ladies’ toilet.

  ‘Her English is really good,’ observed Riley.

  ‘I said that to her in the car coming over,’ agreed Green. ‘She spent a couple of years in the south of England when she was growing up, and some time in Northern Ireland.’

  Green moved to the glass wall and looked inside Marta’s room. ‘Jesus, what have they done to her head?’

  ‘You might as well ask Jesus, because I certainly can’t explain it away apart from the obvious – they’ve taken it as a trophy.’

  ‘Is that the translator?’

  ‘Yeah, and she’s staying put even if Verka’s got good English. I don’t know Verka, so I can’t trust her to tell me everything Marta says.’

  18

  11.28 am

  Raymond stood in the bay window of the front room, his heart falling as he heard the back door shut and Jasmine’s paws scratching against the laminate flooring in the hall as she followed Jack to the living room. She sounded like ten mad dogs rolled into one and the noise her paws made ran through him, set his nerves jangling.

  Why do you always keep me fucking waiting? Raymond thought to himself. You fucking dickhead, Jack!

  Jack’s voice entered the room before he did. ‘Sit down, Raymond!’

  Obediently, Raymond sat on the couch as Jack entered the room, dominating the space.

  ‘What?’ asked Raymond.

  ‘What did you do last night?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a really simple question, Raymond.’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t do nothing.’

  ‘Why’re you up so early after such a late night?’

  ‘Just am.’

  ‘You were buzzing past yourself last night when you came home and you’re never up this early. I know you slept for a few hours because I looked in your room. Have you been doing speed?’

  ‘Don’t like speed, gives me a headache and makes me itch.’

  Jasmine trotted to the double-glazed door leading out to the garden and barked aggressively.

  ‘It’s OK, Jasmine. Come on, back to me!’

  Jasmine hurried to Jack’s feet and sat facing Raymond, staring into his eyes with a look that pushed his heart and pulled his brain in the same instant. He looked at her face and then at Jack’s, back and forth, again and again, until their faces melted together, half Jack, half Jasmine, divided dead centre.

  ‘It’s only smoke, Jas... You’ve been lucky so far, really lucky, Raymond. Your mates. Remind me. What’re they called?’

  ‘CJ and Buster.’

  ‘You’ve been pulled in by the cops a few times but they could never make anything stick on you. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘When it does stick and you get sent to a young offenders’ institution, how do you think you’d get on?’

  ‘Fucking well. I’ve won plenty of fights. I’m hard, me.’

  ‘No, you’re not hard, Raymond. You’re vicious. There’s a difference between hard and vicious. I’m very good at violence but I don’t take any pleasure in it. You enjoy it – that’s what makes you vicious and me hard. Stick to the question. What did you do last night?’

  ‘Went to Sefton Park to smoke weed. Why? What’s up, Jack?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s up, Raymond. When you got home, early hours this morning, I went straight to the wash basket to see if I could work out from the state of your clothes what you’d been up to. Your clothes stank of smoke.’

  ‘We robbed a car. From The Elms. We drove it for a couple of
hours round Sefton Park. We siphoned off the petrol to torch the car and destroy the evidence. And that’s why we haven’t been caught, because we’re fucking clever, cleverer than you think, Jack. It’s not luck. It’s being street smart.’

  ‘Where’d you burn the car out?’

  ‘Ullet Road.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘By the Gate House into Sefton Park, near Bellerive School.’

  ‘I’ll check it out. You had a bath since last night?’

  ‘No. Haven’t had time.’

  ‘You need a bath. You smell of smoke on your skin.’

  Raymond sniffed his hands. ‘Can’t smell nothing.’ There was a bleak silence. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘The night before last, you came home spliffed off your head, ended up unconscious on your bed. You left your laptop on. I watched that film you downloaded, the one where the black woman gets violently raped by three white excuses for men. Recommended viewing for white supremacists.’

  ‘That was Buster, I didn’t—’

  Jack held his hand out to slap Raymond’s face, then held up a warning finger instead.

  ‘Ow! What did you do that for?’

  ‘I didn’t touch you, Raymond.’

  Raymond held his hand against his cheek, felt a burning sensation down to the muscle against his teeth.

  ‘You end up inside, you’ll be like the woman in that film. You’d better get that into your soul. You’re lying to me, Raymond. That wasn’t all you did last night. I watched you when you came home. You couldn’t see me because I was in the shadows. You didn’t go joy riding!’

  Jack watched Raymond withering before his eyes. A look of sheer confusion crossed his features.

  ‘What’s happening with your art these days?’

  ‘Can’t be arsed!’

  Jack picked up Jasmine, carried her to the kitchen and settled her in her basket. Raymond trailed after him.

  ‘Can’t be arsed... Can’t be arsed,’ Jack carried on. ‘After I’ve fed Jasmine, I’m going to work. I’m running there via Ullet Road and the Gate House. If I don’t see any sign of a burnt-out vehicle there, it’ll tell me what I already know. You’ve been lying to me. Get that right into your soul.’