Day of the Dead: A gripping serial killer thriller (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  Clay looked at the display – ‘Home’ – and said, ‘Private.’

  ‘Better go get it, Eve. I’ll wait for you before I begin.’

  As Clay slipped back into the privacy of the dressing room and connected the call, something sharp and deadly cut through the centre of her being. ‘Thomas, what’s the matter?’ She tried to filter out panic from her voice.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry to call and I know you’re up to your eyes in it, but it’s Philip. He wants to have a word with you.’ He dropped his voice. ‘He’s had a nightmare.’

  ‘Put him on, please.’

  ‘Mum?’ Four years old now and raring to go to school next September, on the telephone his voice sounded younger and the terror of his nightmare took away from his usual joyfulness. Clay felt the pieces of her heart falling apart.

  ‘Hi, Philip. You OK?’

  ‘I had a bad dream and I woke up screaming.’

  ‘Philip, I’m very sorry to hear that.’ Clay sat on the bench. She felt tempted to tell him she would be home in twenty minutes to get him back to sleep but knew there was as much chance of flying to the moon. ‘It was just a dream. Dreams aren’t real. Whatever bad thing happened in the dream, it’s like a cartoon on TV. Can cartoons on TV hurt you?’

  ‘No. But it was a horrible cartoon dream.’

  ‘Have you told Dad what it was about?’

  ‘No. I wanted to tell you because the bad man was talking about you in the dream.’

  The smell of the mortuary’s chemicals hit the back of her throat and the sound of running tap water striking the aluminium sinks beyond the door sounded like a cacophony.

  The door of the dressing room opened and Hendricks entered. ‘Want me to stay or go?’ he asked.

  Stay, she mouthed, grateful for the arrival of a friendly face. ‘What happened, sweetheart?’

  ‘A man dressed in black, with pointy face and a... and a big black hat. On a cart, holding the reins of a horse. He came to ours, calling, Philip, come here, I’ve got sweets for you. He had this cage. I said, Go away. I’m with my mum. He laughed and shook his head and I was all alone and I turned to run in the house but I, I was like a, like a, like a statue!’

  On the brink of tears, Philip fell silent.

  ‘Philip, do you remember last summer when we watched that old movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You watched it three times in three days after we’d watched it together twice in one afternoon and evening because you loved it so much. Remember?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘The bad man you’ve been dreaming about was from the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Remember the Child Catcher?’

  ‘Yes. Yes... it was the Child Catcher.’

  ‘You know that films, like cartoons, aren’t real. But everything you see and hear, love, sinks into your head and even if you think you’ve forgotten it, it’s still there and it very often comes out when you’re dreaming.’

  In silence, he worked through the information.

  ‘Do you feel a little bit better, Philip?’

  ‘Sort of. Do you know what happened next in my dream?’

  ‘No,’ she replied evenly, with a mounting sense of dread.

  ‘He got down from his cart. I was a statue still. He came towards me. He laughed. He picked me up with one hand, threw me in the cage. I said, My mum’s a policewoman. He said, Your mum’s on my side. That’s when I woke up. Screaming.’

  ‘Philip, I’ll always be on your side, no matter what.’ She felt her stomach turning and the colour in her face rising. ‘It was a dream. That was all. A dream. I love you with all my heart and I won’t let anyone hurt you or take you away from me and your dad.’

  ‘Will you come home in the morning before I go to nursery?’

  ‘Yes I will. I promise I’ll be there in the morning, Philip.’

  He gave out a long, slow yawn.

  ‘I’ll be there after you wake up in the morning. Go to sleep now knowing that.’

  ‘I love you, Mum.’

  ‘I love you, Philip.’

  She waited for a moment and, as the line went dead, a deeply buried memory surfaced from her childhood at St Michael’s Catholic Care Home for Children.

  In her dream, Sister Philomena was still alive. A faceless stranger dragged Eve’s surrogate mother to a storm-lashed sea and cast her into the waves. Eve, aged eight, had stood on the shore, frozen, helpless and screaming, ‘Bring her back, Death!’

  When she woke up, she recalled, James Peace was sitting on the edge of her bed.

  ‘It’s OK, Eve, it’s just another one of your bad dreams. You’re safe. You’re with me now. Close your eyes. I’ll watch over you until you sleep. Always loved you. Always will.’

  She looked at Hendricks and explained, ‘Philip had a nightmare.’

  ‘What time does he get up?’

  ‘Half seven.’

  ‘You’re going to have to be there come what may, Eve. Whatever shit crops up, I’ll cover you in the morning. He’s fine. He’s with his dad. But go see him. Put your mind to rest.’

  She didn’t move or speak.

  ‘I caught up with Carol White. She was in floods of tears on the phone.’

  ‘The woman with arguably the worst job in the whole wide world.’

  ‘Those reports she writes on the child pornography she watches are clinical and detached but it’s really getting to her. I’m quite worried about her.’

  Clay weighed everything up. She looked at her watch, painfully aware that she was keeping people waiting. ‘As soon as we’re through here, Bill, arrange to see her as soon as possible.’ She pictured Carol White, dead-eyed but forcing herself to smile in the dining room of Trinity Road police station, and was full of sympathy for a good woman with a vile workload. ‘You’re a kind man, Bill. I think that’s just what she needs right now.’

  Clay dug deep and walked into Autopsy Suite 1 where Dr Lamb and Harper waited next to the rubber board on which Steven Jamieson’s hairy body was waiting to be taken apart.

  19

  9.46 pm

  Somewhere deep in Trinity Road Police Station, a cleaner was listening to a radio and the strains of Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’ seeped into the incident room. Alone in the room, DC Barney Cole looked at the screen of his laptop, saw the last page of a long list of known paedophiles on Merseyside and clicked print. ‘I don’t know what’s worse. Looking at this? Or hearing that?’ he said to the shadows around him.

  As paper was sucked into the communal printer on Karl Stone’s desk, Cole stood to his full height and stretched, the tiredness and stress of the past week making his forty-year-old gym-trained body feel like that of an eighty-year-old couch potato.

  He reached towards the receiver of his landline phone to ring Gina Riley when the phone rang on Clay’s desk.

  Picking up Clay’s receiver, there was a muddy silence and Cole guessed the caller at the other end was far away. ‘Good evening, Detective Constable Barney Cole, Merseyside Constabulary, speaking. How can I help you?’

  ‘You are not Eve Clay?’

  Cole recognised the accent straight away, from the last major holiday he had taken in Mexico with his wife Veronica before the kids, David and Gary, came along.

  ‘Are you phoning from the Puebla City Police, Puebla State?’ asked Cole.

  ‘Can I speak with Eve Clay?’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s not here at the moment. Who am I speaking to please?’

  ‘Sergeant Eduardo García, Puebla City Police.’

  ‘Thank you very much for getting back to us,’ said Cole. ‘At last.’ Though we’ve been emailing and phoning you every day for the past week and a half and we’ve had absolutely nothing back from you, he thought with frustration.

  ‘I am just back from leave. Your request ended up on my computer with a note from my colleague. Pushed from this desk to that and back and in the end, I was not here, so the request sits on my desk when I can no deal with it. But, hey, I am
here now.’

  ‘Well, it’s great to have you on board. You are aware that this request we have made to you is a part of a murder investigation?’

  ‘Yes I heard. Very serious business. It’s the holiday season here. We are very, very at short work, at the moment. It is the big festival here in Puebla and the rest of Mexico. The Day of the Dead.’

  ‘So you’re aware that the photograph and email that I sent your department relates to an item definitely a part of those festivities?’

  ‘No, Mr Cole, I wasn’t here when the email and picture arrived.’

  ‘Well, do you have your computer with you, Eduardo?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, go to your inbox—’

  ‘Your email and picture are missing. While I was away, the computer system crashed and a lot of data was wiped away, your email included. Detective Clay’s landline number was written on the note on my desk. I call her.’

  ‘I’ll send it again, along with an attached picture. Your direct email address please, your landline, and your mobile.’

  Cole clicked his pen into action and wrote the details into Clay’s notebook. He said, ‘I’m going to send this email and attachment to you right now, Eduardo. When you receive it, let me know straight away please that both have arrived safely. Are you going to be the named person dealing with our request?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘If you could wait at your computer please, Eduardo. Thank you for getting back to us.’

  Cole hung up, hurried to his laptop and, getting on to his emails, opened ‘Sent items’. After scrolling through two weeks’ worth of emails sent, he came to the one headed ‘Puebla City Police’.

  He opened the attachment and looked at the pottery figurine left in David Wilson’s bedroom murder scene, then he double-checked the contents of the email:

  Dear Sir or Madam

  I am writing to you on behalf of my boss Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay. The item pictured in the enclosed attachment was discovered at the scene of a murder last night in Liverpool, England, United Kingdom. Our initial investigation shows us, from the inscription on the base of the ornament, that the figure of the Weeping Child was manufactured in Puebla City. Our belief is that the figure of the Weeping Child is an ornament used during your festival for loved ones who have passed from life to death. Looking at the object, we do not believe it is hand-made but rather mass-produced. We would be grateful if you could track down the factory that manufactures this ornament and check to see if this has been exported to England in general and Liverpool in particular.

  We currently believe that an escaped murderer, Justin Truman, aka Vindici, is responsible for the murders we are currently investigating. His previous murders were committed in the time window of your Day of the Dead festivities and we are working on the premise that he will continue to kill until the festival is finished. (Photograph attached.)

  DCI Clay’s landline number is 44 151 496 0950.

  Clay’s mobile number is 44 7700 900956.

  Please do not hesitate to contact her or me if you have any questions or need any clarification. Thank you in anticipation of your cooperation.

  Yours faithfully

  DC Barney Cole

  pp DCI Eve Clay, Merseyside Constabulary

  He attached Justin Truman’s mug shot, clicked forward, typed in García’s email address and pressed send.

  As the printer on Stone’s desk stopped spewing out pages of names and contact details of known paedophiles, Cole picked up his iPhone and got through to Gina Riley after a few rings.

  ‘Hi, Barney, what’s up?’

  ‘I’ve got the contact details for the Society of Punchable Arseholes. I’ll send it to your phone and leave a hard copy on your desk.’

  ‘You’re a star. Many people to deal with?’

  Cole looked at the wad on the printer. ‘Enough to keep an awful lot of people busy tomorrow.’ Across the connection and in her silence, he sensed his colleague’s burden and filled his voice with as much kindness as he could. ‘Gina, I’ll let you go.’

  ‘Thanks, Barney.’

  Hanging up, he heard the ping of an incoming email on to his laptop. He went to the inbox and opened the email from Sergeant García.

  Barney,

  Email and attachment received. It is a Llorón (Weeping Child), correct. Will visit all factories but most shut for holiday. If shut will visit owners or managers and get information for you. Open office even if holiday.

  Good wishes

  Ed

  ‘You, Eddie, are my brand-new best friend!’

  Outside, ‘Mandy’ ended. Silence. Cole sighed with relief. Then the opening bars of ‘Copacabana’ infiltrated the walls of the incident room.

  ‘Ah, Jesus wept, Manilow!’

  20

  9.53 pm

  In the family room of the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Detective Constable Maggie Bruce looked at the screen of her iPhone in the palm of her large hand and watched footage from the third round of her last amateur boxing match; she smiled at the moment when she’d decked and knocked out her arch-rival. As the referee counted to ten, and the number seven left his lips, she heard someone at the door and turned the clip off.

  The door of the family room opened and a tall, gaunt male nurse who looked as though he’d stepped from the set of a low-budget horror movie stood in the frame.

  Maggie stood up. ‘Great, take me to Mrs Jamieson.’

  He shook his head and DC Bruce wondered if the man had the power of speech.

  ‘No?’ asked Bruce, the buzz of euphoria she had just experienced watching her most recent success in the ring fading fast.

  ‘Mrs Jamieson’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ DC Bruce heard disbelief in her own voice.

  ‘Just now. She had a massive cardiac arrest,’ confirmed the nurse.

  ‘Did she speak before she died?’

  ‘She did. I asked her who had attacked her.’

  He fell silent and DC Bruce was filled with the aggravating sensation that the bogeyman in green was playing games with her. She looked into his eyes but couldn’t find any hint of emotion.

  The nurse stepped into the room and closed the door.

  ‘What did she tell you about the perpetrator?’ asked DC Bruce.

  ‘It shocked me, I’ll tell you that...’

  21

  9.55 pm

  On the rubber board in the mortuary, the air of unreality around Stephen Jamieson’s corpse in the bedroom at 699 Mather Avenue solidified and, for a series of moments, it appeared to Clay that he was made of wax.

  ‘I guess this is going to be pretty much a repeat of what happened to David Wilson’s body,’ said Dr Mary Lamb, her eyes alive with intelligence as she looked up and down the corpse. ‘Take the blindfold off please, Harper.’ The pathologist pointed at Jamieson’s corpse. ‘From the neck down, once he’s been opened up, he’ll look just like any other person I’ve ever seen in this place.’ She slid latex gloves over her hands. ‘Last week, when you brought David Wilson’s body to me, Eve...?’

  ‘Yes, it’s another paedophile,’ Clay anticipated.

  As Clay spoke her iPhone buzzed and, stepping away from the rubber board, she answered the incoming call from DC Maggie Bruce.

  Dr Lamb leaned in closer to Jamieson’s face as Harper raised his skull from the board with one hand and pulled at the knot at the back of his head. ‘Have you found David Wilson’s penis and testicles yet, DS Hendricks?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re pretty sure where they are and have been tonight. Secreted in the bodies of the victims. Wilson’s testicles were in Frances Jamieson’s mouth and I’d put a lot of money on his penis being behind the tape in Jamieson’s mouth.’

  Clay returned to the rubber board.

  ‘So he took Jamieson’s penis and testicles, just as he took David Wilson’s genitalia?’ Dr Lamb addressed Clay, looking directly at her.

  ‘It’s not a he,’ said Eve Clay. ‘The killer’s
female, Dr Lamb. Genital removal was one of Justin Truman’s signature details, but the killer in 699 Mather Avenue was a female.’

  ‘How do we know that?’ asked Hendricks, his words laced with hope and doubt.

  ‘Frances Jamieson lived long enough to answer the question, Who did this to you and your husband? Jamieson categorically said, over and over, It was a woman, just one woman. There was more than one witness to this and they’re all stone-cold certain. Then she had a massive cardiac arrest.’

  Beneath her skin, Clay felt an intense cold that spread from the crown of her scalp to the nerves beneath her toenails. All eyes were on her, faces wreathed in disbelief and shock, their silence demanding more.

  ‘And, sadly for us, that’s all she said,’ responded Clay. ‘Shall we continue, Dr Lamb?’

  The pathologist nodded at Harper. He pinched the corner of the tape covering Jamieson’s mouth and carefully pulled the tape away. For a moment it appeared Jamieson had no mouth, just a white, horizontal scar beneath his nose.

  Harper placed the tips of his thumb and index finger at the centre of Jamieson’s lips, welded together by white crusts. He opened the mouth as wide as it would part, revealing clenched teeth.

  ‘Gently with the scalpel,’ said Dr Lamb to herself as she placed the sharp tip between his clenched front teeth. When there was enough space between his teeth for her finger, Dr Lamb lifted his top teeth and pushed down at the bottom set. His jaw cracked. She turned his head to the left and there was a sound of something soft shifting within his mouth cavity.

  A trail of blood-laced saliva oozed from the left corner of his lips and gravity came into play inside Jamieson’s mouth. Flesh hung out of his mouth, seemed caught between the light of the autopsy suite and the darkness inside his mouth. Dr Lamb pressed her fingers against his right cheek and pushed.

  A limp piece of flesh protruded from his lips.

  ‘A disembodied penis,’ observed Harper. Reaching inside Jamieson’s mouth with one hooked finger, he scooped out the dead flesh and placed the penis next to the dead man’s face. As he turned Jamieson’s head back, so that he directly faced the ceiling, there was a look of open-mouthed shock on the dead man’s face.