by Neil White
Sam placed the notebook back onto the desk and sat down again. ‘This had better be good.’
‘It will be,’ Grant said, enjoying his moment.
Thirty-Two
Joe needed a break. He was already becoming consumed by Ronnie’s case. He had read the papers over and over, each time hoping something new would jump out at him, but it didn’t. All he saw was a strong circumstantial case. It just needed two bodies to make it airtight. Joe just needed two live people to make it disappear.
He put his head in his hands and as he closed his eyes, Ellie came back to him. She did that when he wasn’t expecting it, almost as if he could only keep her away if he willed it that way. She was the shadow over his life, the wrench of guilt that threatened to overwhelm him if he didn’t focus on keeping it at bay.
He thought of that day fifteen years earlier, and he saw her again, Ellie walking, her headphones on, oblivious, turning into the gravel path that took her between the trees that would lead her back to their house. Joe had been a long way behind her, but he had seen her. And there was a man there, and each time Joe thought of him, his image burned into his mind a little more. Sharp blue eyes, like squints, and a blond fringe under his hood, turning to follow Ellie. And it wasn’t just the image of the man that burned into his memory. It was his own weakness, how he had watched her and had done nothing. That was his shame. His secret.
He jolted as he opened his eyes. His forehead felt clammy. The memory did that to him. It didn’t fade with time, a smothering wave of darkness that engulfed him whenever he forgot to hold it back. He could have stopped her killer. He could have saved her.
Joe allowed his breaths to slow down as he tried to focus on Ronnie’s case.
Monica had been given the job of driving Ronnie home, Gina with her, so that they could speak to Terry Day’s neighbours on the way back. They might know more of what went on that day, when Carrie went missing. If someone else had carried Carrie’s body out of the house, someone might have seen it. More importantly, he wanted to know what they might say if the police ever got round to speaking to them. And despite what Ronnie said, Joe wasn’t ready to give up on Terry Day.
Ronnie’s information about Carrie selling her body gave Joe a new angle. He tried to work out how he could find out more about that. His mind skimmed through the active files he had, whether he could exploit any of them to get access to the seedier side of the city. Then he smiled. There was one.
He went to his cabinet and pulled out the file he was looking for. It was an assault case and the victim had called Joe a fortnight earlier, wanting to drop the case. It wasn’t as simple as that though, because the prosecution might force the victim to go ahead if they were tipped off about his reluctance. Joe had backed off from speaking to him, it might be a set-up, but he had told his client, who had told him to set up a meeting. The assault case was routine, but Joe’s client moved in the right circles to know what was going in with the prostitutes in the city. If Joe could arrange the meeting, where the options could be more easily explained, his client would owe him a favour.
Joe scoured the file for the victim’s number and then dialled. When it was answered, he said, ‘Daniel? It’s Joe Parker, from Honeywells. You called me not long ago. I’ve spoken to my client. He is willing to listen to you. Can you get into town now?’ When Daniel agreed, Joe said, ‘Go to the Acropolis café, behind Bridge Street.’
When he hung up, he called his client and told him where to be. They had talked about this but Joe had advised him against it. The risks were too great. There was something in it for Joe now.
It would be some time before the meeting, and Joe found it hard to concentrate. He could do some work on other cases, but alone in his office, his fingers tapped on the desk and his mind went back to the evening before.
His feelings towards Kim had moved on from memories of their few college intimacies and been replaced by their occasional conflicts as lawyers on opposing sides. There had been coffees together and parties at barristers’ chambers, and he had spent plenty of time with her in court, enjoying tense exchanges and then a flirt and a talk between cases, but the evening before had been the first time since college that it had been just Kim. Had it reawakened old feelings, or was it something else? The gap in his life that made him browse singles’ websites?
Joe stared at his phone. He wanted to call Kim, just to check that they were still on for later, that nothing had changed, but then he stopped himself. What was he hoping for? That she would change her mind, and then he could remind himself that romance just wasn’t for him? That was nothing to do with Kim. But when he thought of her, as he had done through the day, he felt that familiar crawl in his stomach and butterfly flutters. The images of Kim in his head, how he saw her whenever they came across each other in the courtroom, were all mixed up with older memories, of her heavy breaths, of her moving on him, the comedown afterwards, Kim lying naked in his arms.
Then he realised something else – that for as long as he thought about Kim, he felt some of his darkness lift.
Thirty-Three
Sam opened his notebook and gestured with a twirl of his fingers for Grant to continue, who was grinning, showing bright white teeth.
Grant must have spotted him looking, because he said, ‘Nice, aren’t they, my teeth? My others were hurting, so I said, and they were unsightly. They undermined my confidence, which isn’t good for my rehabilitation. Like the glasses. They had to go. Laser treatment. Now, I look pretty. I feel more of a person, you see. They can’t deny me that. It’s my human right.’ When Sam flinched, Grant said, ‘That was the fun. The papers loved that one. Monster Grant Gets Makeover. It was worth it for the headlines. Don’t they ever learn?’
‘What do you want to tell me?’ Sam said, trying to keep the meeting together. He tapped his pen on the notebook page. Grant was playing him.
Grant was still grinning when he said, ‘I’ll tell you a story of how to grow a monster. It’s in all of us. Everyone has their thing, their quirk. Me? I liked them young. But what about other things?’
‘You’ve nothing to tell me, Grant.’
‘Hair,’ Grant said quickly, his grin fading as his eyes darted to Sam’s notebook. As Sam paused, Grant added, ‘There’s a story about hair, how it helps to build a monster. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?’
Sam considered Grant. For all his taunting, he wanted to talk. ‘Go on.’
‘Imagine how it would be if hair was your thing,’ Grant said. ‘If all you wanted to do was touch some, feel it flow through your fingers. You’d want to keep some then, because just touching wouldn’t be enough, and so you’d want to take some, to have a piece of them, something private. It had been theirs, but then it became yours, but what next?’ He leaned closer, before saying in a whisper, ‘You’d want the rest of them.’
When Sam didn’t respond, Grant said, ‘You can understand that, can’t you?’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Come on, Sam, don’t be shy. You know what it’s like to want more. Are you telling me that you’ve never looked at a woman and wondered what she would be like naked?’ Grant’s look darkened and he sneered when he spoke. ‘You thought it, and wanted it, but didn’t have the nerve to do anything about it. I did. Me. Ben Grant. So pay me some respect.’
Sam swallowed. He was here to find out what Grant knew, his first real assignment on the Murder Squad, but he was faced with boasting arrogance, and in his eyes, Sam saw the spit of venom that had ended his sister’s life. He had to ignore that though. He couldn’t waste his chance, and so he closed his eyes for a moment, just to make a silent apology to Ellie, for not reaching out and squeezing the last breath out of Grant. And it wouldn’t make him as bad as Grant, because Grant would be just a casualty in the battle to make the world a better place.
Sam opened his eyes. ‘You can’t say that just because some things on the scale of desire are normal, then everything else is allowed. You have to put down markers.’
Grant was pleased. ‘You’re debating, I like this, but you’re wrong, because it’s so artificial. Murder for politics is fine – go fight a war – boys, but murder for pleasure is wrong? You know nothing.’
Grant raised his hands and held them out. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper. ‘It’s special, you know, when life disappears, that hiss of the last breath under the squeeze of your hands. It’s part fear, part relief, because after everything that has been inflicted, death is a release. A beautiful, joyous ride into the afterlife, an escape from what preceded it. I miss it so much, Detective. You see, some try to persuade you that they are cured and so are safe to be let out. Not me. You need to keep me locked up, because I will kill again, I know it, because I dream of it, that bliss, the tremble in my fingers, the shudder in my groin, everything in sharp focus. But it has to start somewhere.’
‘Does it?’ Sam said, his disgust evident in the curl of his lip. ‘Perhaps it’s just faulty wiring and you were always going to end up like this?’
Grant shook his head. ‘No, there is always a trigger.’ His eyes went distant for a moment, as if he was caught up in some memory. ‘Back to my hair story, and big sister Sally.’
‘Whose sister? Your sister?’
Grant got closer again so that Sam could feel the warmth of his breath. ‘Sally was a little older than me. Five years. I was eleven, Sally sixteen. That’s when I first noticed her hair. She was like them all at that age, all flirt and tease but no idea how to use it, and her hair was long and dark and she flicked it all the time, or played with it, twirled it into pigtails. My hair was short and scruffy, and sort of pointed in all directions, and whenever it was time to wash it, my mother grabbed me, but it was rough and it hurt. We didn’t have a shower, and so it was always done over the sink with a cup, and she would grab my neck and splash the water, and soap went into my eyes.’ He swallowed and his tongue darted over his lips. ‘Then one day, I walked in on Sally.’
‘Do I need to know this?’ Sam said.
‘Are you worried about the time?’ Grant said. ‘There’s no need. I’ve got plenty of it. And yes, you need to know it.’
Sam sat back as he detected an increase in Grant’s breathing.
‘So I walked in on her,’ Grant continued. ‘She was in the bath, beautifully naked, washing her hair, and it was different to how mine was washed. It was slow and luxurious. She didn’t know I was there at first, but I couldn’t move. I was stuck, transfixed.’
‘She was your sister, for Christ’s sake.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything. That’s your problem, Detective, that you see boundaries where I see opportunities. She was a woman to me. Slim, but she had curves, you know, with a peachy arse and perky little tits.’ He grinned. ‘Your sister was just getting to that age.’
The air seemed to rush out of the room. Sam’s chest tightened and his mouth went dry. He couldn’t speak or make a response.
‘Yes, I know all about her,’ Grant went on. ‘I make it my business to know about my enemies. And tell me, do you ever think about her? I don’t mean family stuff, like old photographs. I mean, how she was, you know, when she was all alone.’
Sam exhaled loudly. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘If this is just for show, so I can find you disgusting, you’ve no need to try. You already disgust me.’
‘You keep denying it, Detective.’ He smiled. ‘Back to big sister Sally. It was her hair that did it, you see. I thought you would want to know about that, because you need to know to find out about the missing girl. It all starts somewhere, and Sally, well, she was the start. She had a nice body. Her skin was pale and perfect, the water making it red and hot, and so I watched, couldn’t stop myself. I stared at her breasts. They were small but not flat, so that her hair seemed to sort of rise and fall over them.’
‘Okay, so I’m playing your game,’ Sam said. ‘What happened when she noticed you?’
‘She jumped, like she was shocked, but then I asked her if I could wash it for her.’
‘Did she let you?’
Grant swallowed. ‘Yes. She knelt down in the water, and so I stood over her and poured water onto her head, watched as it ran down her hair and then back into the bath. I couldn’t breathe but I didn’t know why then. All I knew was that the feel of her hair under my hand felt like sparks on my fingers and the flushed pink of her body made my stomach turn over. I was eleven. I didn’t know what that meant.’
‘So where did it go from there?’
‘So you do want to know, Detective,’ Grant said, a gleam in his eyes. ‘I knew you couldn’t resist.’
‘No, I’m just playing along, waiting for you to get to the relevant part.’
‘I can live with that,’ Grant said. ‘It’s a long story, because it became our thing, Sally and me, a pattern. It made Sally feel special, like playing a salon game, because our parents couldn’t afford for her to have a proper wash and cut. We lived in a small terrace, where the front door opened straight into the living room and there were just two bedrooms upstairs. Twice a month she let me wash her hair, when there was no one else in the house, and it became my treat as well as hers, so that I would look at her hair and dream of the next time.’
‘So you blame all of what you’ve done on your sister engaging in some silly game with her little brother?’
Grant shook his head. ‘It changed when I touched her.’
Sam closed his eyes for a moment. He could hear Grant’s excitement rattling as fast breaths through his nose.
‘You touched her?’ Sam said eventually.
‘Yes, I touched her. How could I resist? I had no control then. And do you know how she responded?
‘I’ve got to listen anyway, I suppose.’
‘That’s right, you do,’ Grant said, and then, ‘She giggled.’
Sam sat back and folded his arms, but Grant continued anyway.
‘She had been leaning back as I was washing her hair. I was sweeping it backwards, like they do in the salons, pulling it back, and I was looking right down her body. At her breasts, her stomach, and there in the water, I could see the hair between her legs, and I just stopped. My mouth was open, my little cheeks red, and Sally opened her eyes to see what was the problem. When she saw where I was looking, she said I could touch her. So I did. Just a gentle touch, more like a brush with my fingertips, and Sally’s cheeks flushed, I saw them, and I wanted to keep on touching, but she stopped me.’
‘So she had some sense.’
‘Or maybe she liked it too much. Like I said, people see limitations and boundaries. Not me. I see desires, goals. So I finished washing her hair, and then that was it, the last time. I had done something wrong, and she didn’t let me into the bathroom after that. Instead, all I had was watching her brush her hair before she went to bed, both of us on opposite sides of the smallest room, and sometimes the street light would come in from outside and make her nightdress almost invisible, so that I could see the long stretch of her legs and the outline of her breasts. The light outside would catch loose strands of her hair.’
‘You were kids, making discoveries,’ Sam said, contempt in his voice. ‘That is no excuse for what you did. For all your talk of bravery, you hide behind your story.’
‘Maybe,’ Grant said. ‘But it burns, rejection. I was fourteen when she left home. She became pregnant by a man she had started to see at work and got herself a flat over a small shop. She never mentioned what had gone on, because she acted like it was just some dirty secret, and I didn’t say anything either, but the thoughts of it were always there, those days spent in the bathroom and the soft luxurious feeling of her wet hair.’
‘So you moved on to killing young girls because your sister walked away from you?’
Grant started to laugh, shaking his head. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’
‘Get what?’
‘Sally was my first one. My virgin kill.’
Thirty-Four
Joe wai
ted inside the dark interior of the café, one of the oldest in the city, where an old Greek man served up milky coffees long before someone else renamed them latte. The seats were padded PVC, bright green, below Formica tops that bore coffee rings on their surface like wrinkles and the sugar was poured out of glass jars, all against the backdrop of a blue-tiled mosaic of the Acropolis. The owner, Andreas, made his name on big breakfasts for manual workers, or omelettes for professionals who thought that going greasy spoon kept them in touch with the common man.
For Joe, it was a simpler equation. Andreas let Joe’s clients use the back door, a favour for helping him with a speeding ticket a couple of years earlier that avoided a driving ban and so kept his business going. That’s what I do, Joe thought. He kept people’s lives going when they hit a bump, and this was the payment, to be allowed to use the café to meet people who didn’t like to be seen coming in or out of busy places.
Andreas appeared behind him. ‘When is your boy coming?’ he said, the words rolling around his mouth, his Greek accent still strong.
Joe checked his watch and tapped the table with a coin. ‘Not long, I hope,’ he said, and then turned to the front door as the bell tinkled and a young man walked in. He looked out of place, glancing around nervously, his eyes searching the dark corners of the room. Joe recognised him from the injury photographs sent by the prosecution.
Joe raised his hand in the air and the young man walked over.
‘Perfect timing,’ Joe said to Andreas, who grinned from under his grey moustache, tinged with brown from the cigars he smoked at the back door when the café was quiet. ‘Another coffee please.’
