by Amy Cross
"I'm fine. Just tired."
"Do you think I should go and warn him?" I ask as I slip the phone back into my pocket.
"About what?"
"About the fact that I have worms," I reply with a faint smile, glancing back over at the custody sergeant, "and he was just touching my phone a lot, and I noticed he bites his fingernails. Plus, I was scratching myself just before he came over, so the odds of him getting infected are pretty high."
"Good," she replies. "Leave him be."
"If he starts scratching," I reply, "someone should get him some tablets."
"We really need to get you cleaned up," she says, holding the door open for me as we head out into the parking lot. "Ophelia, would you object to a proper check-up with a doctor? We'd have to know your full name so he could access your medical records, but I really think it'd be good for you. God knows what kind of underlying health issues you might have."
"I'm fine," I tell her. "I've never really been keen on doctors."
"What's wrong? Worried they might put a tracking chip in your brain?"
"I'm cautious," I reply, "not paranoid."
"And you're not willing to accept any help I offer?" she continues as we reach the car. "Is it some kind of badge of honor for you?" She pauses for a moment. "Ophelia, I'm not asking you to tell me all about your past, but there's one question I really need you to answer honestly. If someone else were to start digging around, and if they happened to find out about your life, is there anything you can think of that might be a problem?"
I stare at her, and for the first time today I'm starting to feel genuinely worried.
"You don't have to say what it is," she adds, "but just tell me if there's anything that could be... contentious."
"Why are you asking?"
"It might be important."
I pause for a moment.
She waits for me to say something.
"Maybe," I reply.
"Maybe?"
"Maybe. No-one's perfect. I've never shop-lifted, though, so if you're worried about stuff getting out, you should get your priorities sorted. Can we get in the car now?"
As she unlocks the doors, I glance over at the gate and try to work out if there's any point doing a runner. I've still got this ankle monitor, so I guess I could be tracked down pretty fast, but I'm sure I could get it off without too much trouble. Getting into the car, I feel all my earlier cockiness and confidence fading away, and it's as if I've got this restless urge to get the hell away. I thought I could keep Laura at arm's length, but I should have known better. Sooner or later, I'm going to end up seriously regretting the fact that I allowed myself to get involved.
"So what time is the guy coming to remove this piece of crap from my ankle?" I ask, reaching down and gently tugging on the damn thing. "It's starting to itch worse than my arse."
"I'm not sure," she replies with a frown. It's funny when I manage to shock her.
"You promised it'd be off today," I continue. "I'm not your partner or anything like that, you know. The minute this thing's gone, I'm out of here. We had a deal and I'm sticking to my side, so you have to stick to yours!"
"I know," she says as she starts the engine and eases the car out of the parking bay. "I'll sort it out. It'll be this afternoon, but I'm not sure exactly what time."
"You can't bullshit me," I continue. "I want to know. You have to call someone and set it up when we get back to your house."
"Fine," she mutters. "I'll call someone. Are you happy now? There's a guy, Doug, who does the removals. I'm sure I can get him out to see us some time in the afternoon. You'll get your precious ankle back."
Still tugging on the monitor, I force myself to stay calm. I've managed to hold myself together this long, so I figure I can last a few more hours. I hate feeling constricted, though, and I'm worried that Laura's starting to think of me as a friend. I'm not her friend or anyone's friend; I don't have that kind of thing with anyone, so I figure I should get going as soon as possible, in order to make sure that there are no misunderstandings. Someone like me doesn't need or want friends.
"And you need to go back into the records and pull up a list of anyone who fits the profile of this killer," I continue, trying to focus on the task at hand. "Someone who was in and out of prison on the right dates, and preferably someone who showed signs of arthritis while he was inside. We need to start narrowing things down. You've only got me for a few more hours, so you might as well use me to try to solve your case."
"I'm already on that," she replies unconvincingly. "I just need some sleep first. Right now, I feel as if I'm about to drop, and I know you say you're not the same, but seriously... We'll both be able to work better if we're had some rest. You can't operate on pure adrenalin forever."
I stare ahead for a moment, watching as the gray London street rolls toward us. There's been so much new information over the past few hours, and I feel as if my mind is still processing it on a subconscious level. Maybe I'm getting carried away, but I feel as if there's something I'm missing or some kind of connection I'm not making, even though I've got everything I need.
"Ophelia?" Laura continues.
"Sshh!" I hiss.
"What's wrong?"
"Just be quiet for a moment," I tell her as I try to clear my head. I feel as if I'm right on the verge of something, but I just need to empty all my thoughts out. "He's practicing," I say eventually. "That's what he's doing. He's practicing."
"What do you mean?"
Taking a deep breath, I realize that I'm right. It damn well took long enough, but I've finally figured out why this killer is targeting the homeless community.
"He's practicing on us," I say, turning to her. "On homeless people, I mean. He figures no-one cares if a few street-people go missing, so he can rack up the bodies while he's perfecting his art. He's right, too. There might even have been more victims over the past few weeks, people who were just left rotting. He's using us as a kind of target practice while he works up to something else. Eventually, though, he's gonna go back to killing people who actually matter, and that's when the media's really gonna kick up a shit-storm. It's inevitable. Eventually, once he thinks he's got enough practice in, he'll go for some photogenic young woman."
"Practicing?" she replies. "Why would he need to practice?"
"Because..." I pause, and finally it's as if the scales have fallen from my eyes and I understand everything. "There are two of them, right?" I continue. "That's because he's helping the younger guy practice. He's teaching him how to be a serial killer, and they're using homeless people in the hope that no-one notices. He's training the new guy up to replace him, but it's taking a while because maybe the younger guy isn't really that into it, but for some reason he feels obliged to try, and..."
"And what?" she asks.
"You need to look for someone who has a son," I add finally. "He's training his son to follow in his footsteps."
Part Six
Boats
Chapter One
Laura
> We should talk in person some time.
> Yeah. Some time. Not yet, tho.
> You keep saying that. Why not?
I pause.
It's almost midday and although I should be getting some sleep, I'm chatting to some guy through a dating app on my phone. I managed to close my eyes for a few hours, but I'm too wired to really rest properly, and in a strange way it helps to unwind by having these aimless conversations. This guy, for example, has been on the end of my line for a few weeks now, constantly twitching and trying to get me to meet him in person. Never gonna happen, but I enjoy chatting with him.
The only thing that bugs me is the dick pictures. He sends at least one a day, from various angles and showing himself at various stages of arousal. I'm not sure how he expects me to respond, but I just laugh and delete them, and then I act like I never saw them at all. The whole situation is irredeemably pathetic.
> I want to meet in person. If not, you're just a tease.
Sighing, I realize that it's probably time to stop stringing him along. I'm not going to meet him, or any of the other men I talk to using this app, so I guess I should toss him back into the sea and find someone else to talk to.
> I guess that's that, then. Sorry, but I really don't want to meet up right now.
> So you ARE a tease :)
> I guess.
With that, I close the messaging window and delete the guy from my contacts list, before blocking him. Most of the guys on this app are perverts, and I know damn well that there's only one thing he'd ever want to do if we met in person. Every time he sent a picture of his dick, he asked me to send something in kind, but I'm not an idiot. When I eventually meet a nice guy and get married, I don't want to be constantly worried about old naked photos of myself, so I'm very careful about that sort of thing. My profile picture is a close-up of my mouth and chin, and that's about as far as I'm willing to go in terms of revealing myself online.
Shutting down the app entirely, I figure I can find a new guy tomorrow. I roll over in bed and try to get some more sleep, but half the day is almost gone and I'll have to let Ophelia go in a few hours' time. The worst part is, I'm no closer to solving this case, and with the Daniel Gregory fiasco still ringing in my ears, I'm starting to wonder if I'm cut out for this line of work at all. Lately, my mind just hasn't been on the job properly, and I've been getting sloppy. If I don't catch this killer soon, I think I really might have to start looking at other jobs. For the first time in my life, I'll fail at something.
I should have resigned the other day.
Chapter Two
Ophelia
"I think she's awake," Maureen says with a smile, looking up at the ceiling. "She'll be down soon."
I smile politely. It's a few minutes after noon and I'm sitting in the kitchen with Laura's mother. Given that her mind is clearly going, it's surprising to find that the old woman's so good at holding a conversation. I guess her Alzheimer's isn't too advanced yet, although occasionally she seems to forget things. So far, my impression is that she's a smart woman and that she's very good at hiding her memory problems, although obviously that approach won't work forever.
"Do you want some chocolate?" she asks suddenly, leaning over and opening one of the drawers. She pulls out a small pile of chocolate bars, which she arranges on the table. "Laura spoils me," she continues, grinning with childish glee as her trembling, swollen hands sort through the various brightly-colored wrappers. "She's always buying me chocolate. Sometimes I think she wants to put me into a diabetic coma."
"She sure loves her chocolate," I mutter, staring at the sweets and wondering how many of them were actually paid for and how many were slipped into Laura's pocket.
"She can't eat them," Maureen continues as she opens one of the wrappers. "She hasn't been able to eat chocolate since she was a teenager. She gets the most terrible migraines."
"Is that right?" I reply, amused by the idea of Laura shoplifting something she can't eat and giving it, instead, to her mother. "She's more complicated than she looks, isn't she?"
"She's a good girl," she replies.
Before I can reply, I hear a noise nearby. Glancing over at the door, I see that Laura has finally come back downstairs; she's already dressed, and it's clear that she's ready to get on with things. For a moment, it occurs to me to ask her about the chocolate, but I figure there's no point making her feel uncomfortable. Not yet, anyway.
"We should get going soon," she says, barely looking over at me as she heads to the coffee machine. "I just need to wake up properly, and then we're going to the lab. The results should be in." She puts a new filter into the machine, before turning to me. "Did you get any sleep at all?"
"A bit," I reply, "but then I found this game on my new phone. Something about a flapping little bird. I ended up playing it for hours. I swear, that shit's worse than hard drugs." I pause for a moment. "So did you call the guy about my ankle monitor? It's coming off this afternoon, right?"
"Yep," she replies with a forced smile. "He said he'll be free some time around five, so he's gonna call me and see where we are. Don't worry, it won't be a problem."
As she continues to make coffee, I can't help but feel that she's lying. I'd have heard if she'd made a phone call this morning, and although she could have arranged it by text or email, I think she's stalling. Right now, I'm probably her best hope when it comes to cracking this case, and I wouldn't blame her at all for wanting to keep me around. The problem is, I'm not good with people, not for long periods of time, so all I can do is try to help her for the next few hours and then take off when my ankle monitor has been removed.
When I stick around too long, people start to see the real me. And that's when everything always goes wrong.
Chapter Three
Laura
"Salt," Tim says as he places the hook on my desk. "The rust contains a very high level of salt. I figured it might be significant, so I -"
"Damn it!" Ophelia grunts. She's sitting on the sofa by the door, furiously fiddling with the buttons on her phone.
"Ignore her," I say calmly.
"There are lots of possible reasons for the salt build-up," he continues. "It's hard to pick one out, but the most likely explanation is -"
"Fuck!" Ophelia shouts, stamping her foot on the floor.
"Can you keep it down?" I ask wearily.
"Sorry," she mutters, keeping her eyes fixed on the phone.
"She's hooked on some game," I say with a sigh.
"The hook's from a fishing boat," he continues. "I'm pretty sure of that. The salt and the rust, they're not a coincidence."
"So this guy didn't just wander down to a hardware store and pick up a box of hooks," I reply, grabbing the print-out that was on my desk earlier. "He gets them from a fishing boat." Scanning the list of names, I wait for one of them to jump out at me, but of course there's nothing. This was always a long-shot.
"What've you got there?" Tim asks.
"Bastard!" Ophelia shouts, clearly frustrated by her latest game.
"It's something Ophelia mentioned," I continue. "We were looking at the gaps between the old murders and the new ones, so I pulled a list of people whose jail terms might fit into those gaps. It's not an exact science, so I haven't had much luck, but..." I pause for a moment as I scan the list of occupations next to each of the names. "If the killer we're looking for today is the same killer who was active in the seventies and eighties, there has to be a reason why he had all those dormant periods. If I can cross-reference some of the -"
"You're over-complicating it," Ophelia calls out.
Tim and I both turn to look over at her. She's still playing the game on her phone, and she hasn't even bothered to return our gaze.
"You're going down the rabbit hole," she continues.
"It was your idea," I point out.
"And I was wrong," she replies. "It's always good to be able to admit things like that. It's a sign of confidence." She jams some of the buttons before sighing and finally turning to me. "These games are like crack."
"So what do you think we should do next?" I ask.
"I think the basic idea was right," she continues. "The guy probably did go to prison for a few years, and that's why his murders were spaced out. Of course, when I said that, I thought you guys had some kind of sophisticated database that'd let you filter out all these different parameters, but apparently that's beyond the modern police force. We can't waste time printing all the crap out and going through it by hand, so we should be more direct."
I wait for her to continue.
"And?" I say eventually.
"We're looking for a guy with arthritis," she adds. "A guy with a son, too. He's obviously linked to fishing somehow, so we should just go and ask around. It's time to do some real leg-work. Doesn't bother me, I'm used to getting about, but we need to get in touch with every major fishing fleet in the city and start bugging them with questions. This guy with his bunch of fucking
rusty old hooks didn't just appear out of nowhere. He's obviously got a past, and I figure he might be pretty distinctive. So we need to do some good old-fashioned police work."
I open my mouth to argue with her, but finally I realize that she might just be right. It's not much of a lead, but at least it's better than trawling through reams of paperwork.
"So you two are going to go wandering around, looking for a needle in a haystack?" Tim asks.
"You make it sound so boring," Ophelia replies, returning her attention to the phone. "Let me know when you're ready to get going."
"This is insane," Tim continues, turning to me. "She's -" He checks over his shoulder for a moment, to make sure that Ophelia isn't paying attention, and then he turns back to me. "She's leading you on a wild goose chase," he says, keeping his voice low. "It's just a game to her. She figures the pair of you can waste a few hours going around town, asking random people if they've seen Captain Hook. She probably also think you'll buy her lunch in the process. She doesn't really care about solving the case, Laura. She's playing you."
"Bullshit!" Ophelia mutters.
I look over at her, but it's not clear whether she's referring to the game or to Tim's comments.
"I'm not going to go traipsing around all the piers in London," I say after a moment, turning to him, "but I figure it's worth making a few phone calls. This guy exists, so he has to have left footprints in the world and maybe we can get lucky here. If Ophelia's right -"
"What about your opinion?" he asks.
"Mine?"
"She's just a homeless kid," he continues, "and she's probably leading you down a dead-end. It's in her best interests to make you think she's helping, isn't it? She wants you to feed her and give her stuff and generally make her life a little less miserable. I don't blame her, but at the same time, you need to see what's happening here. You're getting way too invested in her, Laura, and it's going to come back and bite you on the ass. You should be listening to your own instincts, instead of waiting for some smelly -"
