by Lauren White
Bim and I observe all of these developments in a state of misery. We have failed in the task we set ourselves one year ago. Our dream of bringing the Weasel to justice is cinders and ash. That’s why he was smiling when we last saw him. He knew that by setting the lock-up on fire, he’d destroy the evidence against him, and get away with murder. Nothing can mitigate our distress. Our glass is determinedly half empty. The dregs we are left with we toss aside as not worth having. We feel abandoned by Jackie, Gerte and Kerry too. Ironically, to lose them so suddenly, without the opportunity to say goodbye, makes it seem to us as though they've died. That this was the fate they chose, rather than being with us, makes mourning them more difficult. We're too angry. Afterlife begins again because of Bim. She suddenly throws down a challenge to me, as we’re gloomily watching the ten o’clock news.
We’re not really going to let that murdering bastard get away with this, are we? We’re better than that, aren’t we?
Are we?
You know we are.
No, I don’t.
We can get this guy, I just know we can. We solved the whole case, didn’t we?
Okay, that’s working a little...more, more.
We’re completely brilliant. Come on, Kate, if we don’t believe in us, who will? We can do this. You just have to come up with the right idea.
There is one thing we could do.
What?
It is a little west of acceptable police procedure.
So are we. Will it work?
Depends. Did the Weasel have a gas cooker in his Leicester house?
Craig Barker, the student living in the converted basement of Gordon Richard's house, is applying for jobs. He is due to graduate, this summer, in psychology. He is regretting choosing this subject, however, because whatever he does to market himself to prospective employers is likely to be seen as a test. If he doesn't know how to present himself, successfully, how good at psychology can he be? His anxiety is such that he has decided to use a scatter gun approach to finding a career for himself. It doesn't much matter to him what he does, as long as it makes him lots of money - enough to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle, and attract a lovely looking wife. He needs all the help he can get in this latter department, he feels. He is not an ugly young man, so much as ungainly. He lacks confidence. Or is it polish? He isn't entirely sure what, but he lacks something, that much is certain. He has friends. Of course, he does. He has even had a couple of sexually consenting girlfriends. But, he also has the fear, that were he to disappear tomorrow, nobody would notice his absence for a considerable time, if at all. He makes no impression - that is his problem. Yet, this is precisely what he must do, if he is to get himself a job. Pops has offered him a position in his advertising agency, if all else fails, but Craig cannot bear the prospect of that humiliation. His father is an older, if less sandy, version of himself but he is the type of man who could make an impression comatose. Why couldn't Craig have been born to an underachiever? As it is, he will be the first generation of Barkers to be less successful than the one before. The dynasty will change direction with him. He will be the point at which they're forced to learn the painful lesson that social mobility is a lift that goes up, and down. No! He won't let that happen! He has spent two weeks working on his curriculum vitae, wringing every Saturday and summer job he has ever had - all four of them - for evidence of his employability. Then, there are his activities at University. His one year on the student newspaper. His two years in the chess club. And, his six months in the orienteering club, which he only joined so he could imply some kind of physical activity, other than pub crawls and sex, in his letters of application. He has chosen the civil service, four national banks, an entertainment group, and a magazine company which owns a couple of travel titles as the pool in which he is about to go fishing for a career. Whatever he catches will have to make his father proud, and his friends jealous. He has been cooped up in his bedsit, alternately revising for his finals, next month, and sweating about his future, since the Easter break. He was lucky to find this place. It is well decorated and furnished. It is also dry, even in winter, and best of all, cheap. His landlord is a bit weird. Friendly, enough though. Craig has been invited upstairs for a beer and a game of darts, several times. Yet somehow, he is not knowable. Remote. Chilling, he would be tempted to say, if he was the type to allow his fancy to take flight. It is how he feels about the bedsit, really. There is something creepy about it. Perhaps, this is due to it being in a basement. It doesn't get much light and he has always found artificial light in the day time much more spooky than complete darkness at night. Why is that? Is it something from his past? He has often had terrible dreams in this bedsit too. He isn't sure of the cause. It could be an unconscious reaction to studying psychology. Or it could be leaving home, for the first time. The pressure of studying at university is another possibility, he has considered. Curiously, the dreams always end in the same way. He is awakened by a woman's scream.
As he puts the final touches to his C.V. Craig begins to believe he can smell gas. After analysing what it could mean, psychologically, for another hour, his defences cave in, and he circles his tiny bedsit, obsessively, sniffing the gas central heating installation, the gas hot water heater, and his gas cooker. Where is the damn smell coming from? It appears to be at its most intense in one particular area of his bedsit. It is where the staircase, which once joined the basement to the larger part of the house above, used to be. He tests this theory by going outside, galloping up the flight of stairs to his landlord's front door, opening his letterbox, and inhaling, deeply. Hell!
He rings Gordon in Spain on the number he has been given for just such an emergency. He is too young to want to carry the responsibility of handling a domestic crisis by himself. His father takes care of these things at home. But, even after years of watching him doing so, Craig is reluctant to have a go himself. It would seem like too much of an oedipal leap, somehow. He prefers to be told what to do. He is expecting to be instructed to ring the gas company, or at the very least to obtain a key to the house, which his landlord will have probably left, locally, with a trusted friend, so the response he actually does receive comes as a surprise to him.
There is no need to do anything, I'm telling you. I am on my way over, myself. I will get the first flight I can and be there in a few hours. Don't do anything until I get there.
Like light a match you mean, Craig jokes, sarcastically, but the line has already gone dead.
He is in a quandary. Gordon is unerringly softly spoken and polite, but there is something in his manner that demands obedience. That much is reassuring. Yet, Craig is the one living below, what is after all, an unexploded bomb. It seems absurd to do nothing; ridiculous and needlessly dangerous. What if half the neighbourhood goes up in smoke and he gets blamed. What would Pops have to say about that? He’d never get a job anywhere.
Pete Dixon has been reading a book about the law of attraction. It explains everything. How his whole life to date has been a disaster. How if he wants to make it better, he needs to practice the power of positive thinking. He is not doing well. It is hard to think pleasant thoughts, while investigating a potentially fatal gas leak. It is harder still when he has to work with Bill Saunders - the laziest twit, he has ever laid eyes upon. He has to do everything himself. Bill is only here for the ride. Although, he has a good sense of humour, he mentally adds, trying to redress the balance of his negativity. And, he does stand his round in the pub.
The two coppers who've been sent to help him look bored as hell. Although, they may be just deep in thought. No, they keep looking at their watches as if they're anxious to get off for their tea break. The blues and twos all the way to Maggie's café in the parade of shops around the corner, he shouldn't wonder. But, they are probably extremely committed to their jobs the rest of the time.
Better keep people away from the house, he suggests, to give them something positive to do.
They look up and down the empty street and one of th
em asks him: Should we tell the neighbours to evacuate?
Pete smiles, uncertainly. Is he taking the piss or what? Damn, more negativity. That is another load of bad luck on the way. No, he mustn't think that or it will happen. Stop it! He mustn't think that either. He tries to remember how to make himself feel better. This is the key to it all. He has to feel good, if he is to attract good experiences to himself. He sets himself the task of thinking of ten good things to say about the situation he is in.
Nice weather, he tells Bill. Nice weather, he repeats to himself.
He hadn't expected to get stuck so fast.
Lovely day, he mumbles, feeling useless and trying to calculate what new disaster will befall him because of this.
The gas meter is inside the house so he makes a temporary disconnection outside, while Bill, the two policemen, and the young student who lives downstairs, stand around watching him. A few neighbours have begun to look out of their windows too. They'll soon be out to investigate what is going on, which might at least give the police something to do. In the meantime, he needs to gain entry to the upper part of the house so he can inspect the installation and discover exactly where the leak is. There's still a strong smell of gas emanating from it. But the front door is locked and nobody seems to have a key.
We can have that down in a jiffy, one of the policemen boasts, when he explains the problem. Or should that be, opportunity?
Pete forces a smile onto his lips. Isn't it nice to have such a helpful police force, he silently adds to his list of positives.
The policemen shake their heads as soon as they actually inspect the door. It is solid wood with three good quality locks. They decide not to mess around. They call out a locksmith straight away.
As soon as the front door is opened, Pete leads the way inside. Bill only follows him in because he is told to, but he does offer to carry some of their tools. On entering the kitchen, Pete spots the cooker knob straight away. Marvellous what a trained eye will see, he adds to his list. Turning the knob to the off position, he opens the windows.
All clear, he shouts outside to the policemen, who lumber in to join him, with the student trailing behind. Can you believe this guy left his gas cooker turned on, while he went away on holiday?
But, that doesn't make sense, Craig Barker says, with a perplexed expression. He has been away for over a week. I would have smelled gas before today, if the knob was the cause.
The plonker left the gas on, I tell you. There is no mistake. But, it is probably easily done.
Neither of the officers have anything to say on the matter at all. Their attention has been arrested by a pile of newspaper cuttings on the kitchen table.
Pete takes a look too. They’re all about those murders: the four young women who were abducted each June by the June Killer. There are some about an attack in Leicester on another woman too. Very negative energy is all this.
In the middle of the sea of newsprint stands an elegant blue satin high heel.
Isn't it unlucky to put shoes on a table?
Nobody answers him. They're staring at the most bizarre thing of all. The strangest thing they’ve ever seen. It is a plastic cap, with holes punched into it, through which tufts of hair have been drawn, and crudely glued, on the inside. Blonde hair it is. Real human hair, it looks like. Pete scratches his bald pate. How the hell did he attract that?
The Weasel is arrested on suspicion of murder as he lands at East Midlands Airport. He shows no surprise. Not even when, after hours of questioning, he finally figures out what the police have found in his house. The impossibility of it seems curiously apt. It is the hand of destiny. A sign from God, it is over. His mission here is done. There is even something in him which rejoices at this. It is a relief to talk about it too. To tell them everything he has done. To share with them how clever he has been. He has been so secretive all his life, to be known at last feels orgasmic. It is ecstasy and death woven together.
Bim and I watch and listen, dispassionately. I speculate, fleetingly, about whether the others in the Light know that we've got him, or does it truly not matter to them now? It matters to me less than I expected, if I'm honest. I'm glad it is done. It is good to put a full stop to the whole sorry affair. But, I lack the sense of triumph I anticipated. There is no exhilaration, only exhaustion.
The detectives interviewing him exude the same air of torpor. There is something about Gordon which is deadening even when he is not actively engaged in murder. The gruesome detail of what he has done wears away at you. There is only one thing he says which jolts me. He isn't Gordon at all but Simon. Or so he claims. He and his brother traded places at six years old as a joke which nobody else, including their parents, got. That was the joke, they decided, no one knowing. But, when Gordon developed cancer and the hospital appointments started, their trade was fixed. Suddenly, it seemed to them their joke had a terrible consequence. They didn’t dare own up to it. Privately, Simon believed this was essential to his survival. His mother had often said she'd never wanted twins. If she'd been able to abort one of them, she would have, she confessed, within his hearing to a friend. He was convinced had she chosen only one of them to survive, it would have been Gordon and not him. The cancer was nothing more than this really: the embodiment of his mother's preference. The boy she knew as Simon was dying. Why tell her it was a case of mistaken identity? No, he cloaked himself in his brother's pelt and went on living in his mother's love.
Gordon, or Simon, never seems to lose the pleasure that talking about his crimes brought him in those first heady days of his confession. He talks his way into court, through his trial and conviction, and on into a Secure Mental Hospital. There is a dull patch, for a while, after this, because he doesn't like talking to psychiatrists. He is smarter than they are, naturally, and he detests the silly games they want to play. But, after a few months, he finds a way of transcending their interference with his fun. He has received dozens of requests to write his life story. But, the one he accepts is from a first time writer whom he believes he can control just as he did Scott Ramsey.
Psychology graduate, Craig Barker's bestseller - My Landlord was the June Killer – will be published very soon.
The Weasel claims me as his in his confession. I'm officially a murder victim now. I don't mind. I barely remember what it was like to have physical form. Nor what physical pain is like. Strangely, having been murdered gives me more credibility as a detective in the spirit world too: the earth bound spirit world, that is.
Are you coming with us to the football match, Auntie Kate, Jethro asks, rousing me from my thoughts.
He is tribal with football regalia: unrecognisable as my kith and kin. My favourite nephew!
Define, we, I toss back at him.
What?
Who is going?
Us...Me, Caleb, and Sam.
On your own?
Daddy is taking us.
Daddy?
Yes.
Won't that be nice?
Are you coming then?
No, I think I'll stay here and keep your mum company.
That was a hard choice to make. Since when did Phil start taking the boys to football matches?
Carrie and I wave them off in his Audi, the boys in the back, properly secured, their limbs moving like tentacles.
I ask casually as we walk back into the house: When did your ex become a father?
She grins. You're never going to like him are you?
No, why do you?
Well, I have to admit, since he walked out on us...
He was pushed out after he tried to kill you, I think.
Whatever. Since he left, he has become a halfway decent father to the boys.
And, that is good?
For them it has to be.
And, for you?
He is okay with me.
Has he met Nigs yet?
No.
There is something in the way she said this that captures my curiosity. Is everything okay between you two?
It just sort of fizzled out.
Why? I thought I saw a spark there.
She shakes her head. I look like you is all.
I try and ignore the feeling of triumph this gives me. How can I be dead, and still want to compete with her?
It was more than that, Carrie, I reassure her, generous in victory.
Was it?
Course, it was.
Maybe. But, it’s over now. I've done with men who don't quite want me.
You're sure?
Yeah, I'm going concentrate on myself for awhile.
A period of abstinence?
Something like that.
Does that mean I can move back in? I ask this swiftly, before I have a chance to feel bad for trying to manipulate her. Not for work. I'll keep my office on for that.
Our office.
Yes, quite. It is just that I'm fed up of having to share my own flat with lodgers. I'd rather be one here.
She laughs. Well, if you have to...
You wouldn't mind if I brought Bim with me too, would you?
She purses her lips. I thought she was hanging out with Reece.
