The Facts of Life and Death

by Belinda Bauer

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it would.’ Then he paused cautiously and added, ‘But none of the girls who escaped mentioned a gun.’

  ‘I know,’ said King. ‘Although he could’ve had a Howitzer and Becky Cobb probably wouldn’t have noticed.’

  ‘And if he did have a gun, why didn’t he just shoot Frannie Hatton?’

  ‘Noise?’ shrugged King. ‘Or maybe she tried to run and he caught her and lost control of the situation or himself. Or he dropped the gun. Or she knocked it out of his hand and he had to improvise. Maybe it jammed. Or it’s traceable. Or he only needed it as a threat and never intended to use it. Could have been lots of reasons.’

  Calvin nodded. They all seemed obvious now that DCI King had said them.

  ‘Or maybe he just likes the intimacy of suffocation,’ she added more slowly.

  Calvin frowned at her.

  ‘You imagine it,’ King went on. ‘Putting your hands around somebody’s throat or holding them face-down in mud or sand or water. Feeling them fight and then weaken and finally give up and die.’

  Calvin did imagine it.

  ‘You’d literally hold a life in your hands,’ said the DCI bleakly.

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Calvin, and – almost unconsciously – his hands gripped the steering wheel in front of him, and squeezed so tight that his knuckles went white. ‘You’d really have everything under control.’

  DCI King gave him a serious look.

  ‘Jesus, Calvin. Just tell Shirley to slow the fuck down, will you? Nobody has to die.’

  28

  RUBY WATCHED THE sea a hundred feet below. The tide was on the turn and the deep green water slid quietly up against the cliffs and then just hung around with nothing to do until the next swell came along.

  She hadn’t been to the haunted house since that last time with Adam. She’d been nervous of the flagstone in the hearth. But now the thought of the swing and the stile and the dark woods that hemmed the Clovelly pathway made her more nervous.

  Her nose was pressed against the floorboard. It smelled of rot. Now and then she moved her eye and put her nose to the hole instead, to breathe the sea air. Now and then she got a whiff of kelp and dankness that reminded her of the muddy paddock, devoid of horses.

  She thought of the horseshoe on Miss Sharpe’s charm bracelet tinkling as she tapped her finger on the page of her diary.

  Where did you hear that word, Ruby?

  I don’t know, Miss. On the bus, I think.

  Do you know what it means?

  No, Miss.

  Well, it’s not a nice word, Ruby. Don’t use it, OK?

  I wasn’t going to, Miss.

  Good.

  Ruby was a bit confused. She’d heard Daddy use that word, and it couldn’t be that bad because then she’d been asked to wait after class, and then Miss Sharpe hadn’t been angry with her at all. She had asked her about the swing and the paddock and Adam, and if everything was all right at home. Ruby had said, Yes, Miss because the house was fine apart from the damp patches and the bathroom window. She hadn’t got a clue why Miss Sharpe wanted to know about their home. Grown-ups often said confusing stuff.

  Then Miss Sharpe had said, You know you can always come and tell me things, Ruby.

  Yes, Miss.

  Even secret things.

  Yes, Miss.

  Miss Sharpe had put her head on one side as if she was waiting for something. Ruby didn’t know what.

  I have a secret. Do you want to hear it?

  OK, Miss.

  Well . . . I have a pet rabbit called Harvey, and sometimes I talk to him just like he’s another person!

  Ruby had smiled because Miss Sharpe had smiled, but she didn’t see why talking to a rabbit like a person was such a big deal. She talked to Lucky all the time and he was made of plastic. It was like some grown-ups didn’t know the difference between games and reality.

  Do you have any secrets, Ruby?

  No, Miss.

  That was a lie, too. But what was the point of having secrets if you were going to tell them to the first person who asked? Then they weren’t secrets any more.

  She did wish she had a rabbit though.

  A sharp crack close to her ear made Ruby jump.

  ‘Shit,’ said Adam. ‘I was trying to creep up on you.’ He lifted his foot carefully and the floor creaked back into place.

  They both made the same alarmed face, and then laughed.

  Adam sat cross-legged beside his own hole, like an Eskimo going fishing.

  ‘You OK?’ he said.

  He meant after yesterday, Ruby knew, but for some reason she didn’t feel embarrassed, even though he’d seen her cry.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  ‘It didn’t bite you, did it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re trained not to bite,’ he said. ‘Not until the policeman says so. We had a demonstration at school.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Ruby was surprised. The only demonstration her school ever had was a policewoman with ladders in her tights showing them how to ride a bicycle.

  ‘Yeah, this bloke had a big padded suit on and when the policeman told the dog to bite his arm, he bit his arm, and when he said to bite his leg, he bit his leg. But the dog only did that when he was told. Otherwise he just barked. Those dogs are so well trained.’

  ‘I hate them,’ said Ruby.

  Adam nodded. ‘Yeah, I’d hate them too if one trapped me in the Bear Den.’

  He leaned sideways on to his elbow, and then rolled on to his tummy beside Ruby and put his eye to the hole.

  There were hardly waves, and no foam at all.

  ‘It’s rubbish today,’ said Adam against the wood.

  ‘I know.’

  But they watched it anyway.

  ‘How’s Lucky?’ said Adam.

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Did you get carrots?’

  ‘No, a potato.’

  ‘A potato?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Ruby was sorry she hadn’t got carrots now. Adam had told her to and it would have been funny. ‘It’s like a boulder,’ she explained.

  ‘That’s funny too,’ said Adam.

  Their feet touched.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Adam.

  ‘’S OK,’ said Ruby. Then she giggled and nudged him back.

  ‘Hey!’

  They wrestled gently with their ankles for a bit, never taking their eyes from the holes in the planking. Then Adam leaned over and nudged her shoulder with his.

  ‘Ow!’

  He looked up. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  She looked up too. ‘No.’

  They laughed.

  When they put their eyes back to the floor, their shoulders remained touching. Ruby’s eyes were on the sea but her whole mind seemed to be thinking about Adam’s shoulder touching hers. She could feel his warmth right through their T-shirts.

  The sea was dead dull but they kept looking at it anyway.

  Ruby wanted to thank Adam. She wasn’t sure why. For Lucky, or for saying he’d have been afraid of the dog too, or just for lying beside her so they could watch the sea together.

  But talking would have been too loud, so she didn’t.

  Her elbows started to hurt. She should get up and give them a rest. But she lay there instead, pressing Adam’s shoulder with hers.

  ‘My dad’s got a girlfriend,’ said Adam.

  Ruby looked over at him. ‘What?’

  Adam didn’t take his eye from the hole in the floor. ‘My dad’s got a girlfriend. I heard my mum telling my gran on the phone.’

  Ruby stared at Adam’s ear. The outer edge of it was very red. Was it always so red? She wasn’t sure.

  ‘Who’s his girlfriend?’ she said, dreading the answer.

  Adam rolled on to his side so they were facing each other, but he stared at the floor between them, picking at it with his fingernail. There was a crack there where he’d trodden just now, and a jagged edge. ‘Somebody in London, I think. He’s always there.’

>   Ruby wasn’t sure what to say. She was relieved to hear that it wasn’t Mummy, but she felt sorry for Adam.

  ‘That’s horrible,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Adam. ‘He’s a bastard.’

  Ruby was shocked to hear Adam use that word about his own father. He must really hate him.

  ‘Is he going to leave you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ sighed Adam. ‘I’m not even supposed to know about it. Nobody knows I know.’

  ‘Does Chris know?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Ruby picked at the crack too, so they were doing it together. The wood was so rotten it was easy to pull bits off, even with their fingers.

  ‘Who will you live with if they get a divorce?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Adam shrugged. ‘With my mum, probably.’

  ‘Yes, mostly the kids stay with the mummies,’ said Ruby with some authority. ‘That’s what all the kids at school do.’

  Adam nodded and said, ‘Yeah.’

  He worried the wood angrily with his fingernail until Ruby touched his hand.

  He looked up at her.

  Then he kissed her.

  It took her by surprise, but she only drew back a little tiny bit. She kept her eyes open and so did Adam as his mouth touched hers like electricity. For a second she saw herself reflected in his pupils.

  Then they heard Chris banging into the haunted house, crunching something underfoot and saying, ‘Shitting bollocks to that,’ and Adam rolled over and put his eye to the floor once again.

  ‘Adam!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tea.’

  ‘OK.’

  He sighed and knelt up and said, ‘Bye, Ruby.’

  Ruby got up and went to the window and watched Adam and Chris and the dogs all the way down the hill to their house.

  29

  CALVIN BRIDGE WAS exhausted.

  Somehow he had imagined that getting married would mean more of the same, but it was turning into none of the same. In fact it seemed to be a process of chucking out the same, and filling the same’s space with a whole bunch of new stuff that wasn’t the same at all. Stuff he really had no interest in. Organization. Commitment. Babies.

  Swatches.

  How had it happened? Was he overreacting? Was this just the way things went? And was it temporary? After the trauma of the wedding, would he have the old Shirley back? Or was the Shirley that was morphing into a completely different person in front of his very eyes the real Shirley? The one he’d be married to for the rest of his life.

  Calvin actually shivered at the thought.

  He longed for drink, drugs and debt. He longed for a Korean gangster flick and a meat-feast pizza all to himself.

  He longed for another life. But, between them, Shirley and the Devon and Cornwall Police had him running through this life like a hamster in a wheel.

  As well as trying to catch a serial killer, on Tuesday night Calvin had held Shirley’s hand through a tablecloth crisis. The choices were Ivory, Buttermilk and Vanilla. They were all the same, but it had taken three hours hunched over the huge and hideous books of swatches, and two long, weepy interludes, to reach a decision.

  And the swatches were only part of it. Shirley had turned Calvin’s flat into her own little incident room, swirling with a thousand paper samples and cloth samples and cake samples and favours and flavours, and infinite lists that Calvin was supposed to have memorized. It was a glittery tide of wedding porn – all of which cost a thousand times more than real porn. The invitations were impregnated with bits of lavender and had edges that were ‘hand-torn’ – presumably by experts, given the price. And the centrepieces – which were only made of flowers – were each the same price as a crate of reasonable beer. The cake was costing more than Calvin’s first car.

  ‘Is it made of gold?’ he’d said, and Shirley had cried for the four millionth time since the Italian Grand Prix.

  ‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’ said Kirsty King.

  ‘No,’ sighed Calvin. ‘I don’t know what any woman’s thinking. Ever.’

  DCI King gave him a quizzical look. They were eating lunch in the incident room, which doubled as the staffroom. There were vending machines containing curly sandwiches and warm chocolate bars, and a frieze of evidence around the wall. Photos of Jody Reeves and the Burrows and the lay-by, and of Frannie Hatton’s body – still the only one they had.

  Most of the major-incident team had gone out for chips, but Calvin was eating a sandwich from the machine that was so tasteless he had to keep looking at it to make sure it was still prawn. DCI King brought the same lunch from home every day – a pork pie and olives, which she fished out of their tall glass jar with Dr Shortland’s gall-stone scoop.

  It was perfect for the job.

  Now DCI King popped one in her mouth, ignored his lament, and carried on where she left off. ‘I’m thinking, maybe the women weren’t the targets.’

  Calvin raised an eyebrow. ‘Frannie Hatton would probably disagree with you.’

  ‘Touché,’ said King. ‘They were targeted, of course, but what if they weren’t the people he was really aiming to hurt?’

  Calvin wasn’t quite sure what King was getting at, but he was happy to go along with her, if only because she wasn’t talking about renting an owl as a ring-bearer.

  ‘We have so little to go on,’ King continued. ‘But, taking the assaults on Kelly and Katie into account, what we do have to go on is a consistent m.o.’

  She started to count the modi operandi off on her fingers, using the gall-stone scoop as an aid. ‘One: he covers his face. Two: he makes them take their clothes off, but he doesn’t sexually assault them. Three: he makes them phone their mothers.’

  She paused and Calvin looked at her expectantly for ‘four’. ‘That’s it,’ said King. ‘Those are the only three things we know for sure. Everything else is just extrapolation or assumption.’

  ‘OK,’ he agreed.

  ‘So, covering his face is obvious. But you tell me, Calvin, why does he make them strip and then not touch them?’

  Calvin did try to think, but it seemed counter-intuitive. Once a woman took her clothes off, the whole point was to touch them. Otherwise you might as well just read a magazine. He had to admit, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said King. ‘I mean, I know it’s going to turn out to be some weird screwed-up reason because of some sexual dysfunction or some shit that happened when he was a kid or something. But what it does do is speak to motive, and it tells us that – for the first three assaults at the very least – the motive was not to sexually assault these women. Even if he’d been working up to it, then I reckon he would have got there by Frannie Hatton, don’t you? I mean, if you can murder someone, you can sexually assault them, surely?’

  ‘Right,’ Calvin assumed. ‘That makes sense.’

  Did it? He wondered. What made sense to a killer might not be what made sense to DCI King and him, eating their lunch in Bideford police station.

  King went on, ‘But call your mother. That’s bizarre and it’s consistent and it’s very specific. And he’s been saying it right from the start, so it must be an important element in whatever sick game he’s playing. It makes me think, why are they all young? And that makes me think – they’re all young enough to have mothers to call, so maybe the mothers are the key.’

  ‘But there are no links between the families,’ said Calvin. ‘The mothers don’t know each other, they don’t share the same interests or incomes or lifestyles, they don’t go to the same places or know the same people.’

  ‘Right,’ said King. ‘And that’s why I started thinking, maybe the mothers have been the targets all along. Not because of who they are, but because of what they are.’

  ‘And what are they?’ said Calvin.

  King stared at him. ‘They’re mothers, Calvin.’

  Calvin frowned. ‘But how can they be the targets if he’s killing someone else?’

&n
bsp; ‘Think about it,’ said King. ‘Who suffers more – the victims or their mothers?’

  ‘The victims,’ shrugged Calvin. ‘They die.’

  King tapped her teeth with the scoop. ‘You don’t have children, right?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said King. She drummed the scoop on the table a few times, thinking, and then looked over her shoulder to the desk sergeant, Tony Coral, who was eating a cheese and onion pasty at the table behind her. ‘Tony, you have kids, don’t you?’

  ‘Two boys,’ nodded Sergeant Coral, with flaky pastry down his front.

  ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Ivor and Martin.’

  ‘Would you rather die yourself or watch Ivor and Martin die?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ He coughed, but King just kept waiting for an answer, so he croaked, ‘How are they dying?’

  ‘Horribly,’ said King.

  Coral brushed flaky pastry off his tunic and shook his head. ‘Jesus, I couldn’t watch that. Don’t even like thinking about it.’

  ‘So you’d rather be dead yourself than watch your children die?’

  ‘Yup,’ he said, and put his pasty down with a look that said he wouldn’t be picking it up again.

  ‘Cheers,’ said King, and turned back to Calvin. ‘See? What if the killing’s just part of the whole thing? The stripping and the calling the mothers, and forcing them to witness the murder? The girls suffer and die, but the mothers have to suffer and go on living.’

  Calvin frowned. ‘It seems a bit of a roundabout way of hurting someone.’

  ‘Maybe he can’t hurt his own mother – or maybe he doesn’t even know he wants to – and so he’s taking it out on other people’s mothers.’

  ‘Acting out,’ said Calvin. ‘I think that’s what Americans call it. Shirley watches those shows where people blame their parents for everything. Acting out. Or is it acting up?’

  ‘No, that’s the kids on Supernanny,’ said King. ‘But whatever the Americans call it, it makes sense, don’t you think?’

  Calvin shrugged. ‘As much sense as any other bloody thing.’ DCI King nodded and sat back in her chair. Then she said, ‘You’re shedding cherubs.’

  ‘Huh?’ Calvin followed her gaze under the table to his feet, where a light sprinkling of tiny silver and gold foil cherubs had escaped his turn-ups.