by Mark Roberts
‘Why do you think so highly of me that you’ve copied me and committed murder?’ asked Jimmy.
‘I was terrified people would find out about me, about my condition, hunt me down and lock me up in the dark so that they could use me and sell me to their friends because I was different to other children. When I learned about you, I stopped being frightened. You are my protector. You are my hope. You are my saviour. I wanted to do for others what you’d done for me. And I wanted you to love me for it.’
Lucien looked Jimmy up and down. ‘What’s wrong? Why are you clutching your stomach like that?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me, lad.’ He looked at Lucien closely and asked, ‘What are you going to tell Eve Clay?’
‘The truth, the complete truth.’
Walking out of the cell, Jimmy pointed at Clay and Lucien looked directly at her.
‘Where are you calling from?’ asked Clay, repeating the question from the switchboard during the call from 699 Mather Avenue.
Something dark shifted in Lucien’s face, as though his soul was transforming into a glacial rock.
‘I’m calling from 699 Mather Avenue.’
Lucien spoke with the same androgynous voice as the caller from the Jamiesons’ house. He looked and sounded fifteen years older and the effect sent chills to Clay’s core.
‘What’s the nature of your problem?’ asked Clay, stepping into the cell.
‘A man has been murdered and his wife has been tortured.’ Lucien stared directly at Clay. ‘Tell Eve Clay to get over here as fast as she can – 699 Mather Avenue.’
Lucien made a telephone receiver with his right hand and replaced it into thin air.
A pair of footsteps came down the corridor, speed and urgency in each pace forward. Lucien’s features softened and, within half a minute, he became an approximation of his own self again.
The footsteps stopped behind Clay in the doorway of the cell. She glanced back, saw Barney Cole and knew from his face that something of massive significance had emerged. She stepped towards him.
‘I need to talk with you, Eve,’ he whispered calmly. ‘Before you take Lucien back to interview. The DNA results have come in.’
‘You need to let Christine go,’ said Lucien. ‘I’ll tell you the truth, the complete truth, the absolute truth. Oh... and tell Detective Sergeant Hendricks to bring the photograph that Sergeant Carol White gave him to the interview.’
‘Has Sergeant White been feeding you information, Lucien?’
‘Absolutely not. It’s her colleague Alice Burns. She’s been telling me everything. Alice and her boyfriend. Kevin White. Carol White’s husband.’
113
2.20 am
‘Where’s the social worker?’ Lucien’s solicitor appeared perplexed.
‘Do you want to tell her?’ asked Clay. ‘Or do you want me to?’
Lucien looked over his shoulder. ‘Is Vindici in there, behind the glass?’ His face was flushed, his eyes red raw with the tears he had shed.
‘Yes,’ replied Clay.
‘Who?’ asked his solicitor.
‘I’m going to tell the truth,’ said Lucien to the glass.
Clay addressed the solicitor. ‘Lucien is over the age of eighteen. He’s not sixteen and doesn’t need a social worker present. In the eyes of the law he’s an adult.’
Clay placed her hands on the brown envelope containing the DNA results and looked at Hendricks as he formally opened the interview.
‘Have you released Christine yet?’ asked Lucien.
‘No. You’ve stated that you’re going to tell the truth, Lucien.’
‘I’ve told you some truths but I’ve told you lots of lies as well. That’s all going to stop now.’
‘Did you torture and murder David Wilson in his house in Dundonald Road on Monday the fourteenth of October 2019?’
‘Yes and I did it by myself.’ There was a mixture of pride and fear in his voice. On the table, Lucien’s hands trembled and he knitted his fingers together to still them.
‘Did you torture and murder Steven Jamieson in his house on Mather Avenue on Wednesday the twenty-third of October 2019?’
‘Yes and I did it myself.’
‘Did you tie up and torture Frances Jamieson in her house on Mather Avenue on Wednesday the twenty-third of October 2019?’
‘Yes and I did it myself.’
‘Did you order the Weeping Children statuettes?’
‘Yes and had them sent to Christine’s house.’
‘Why twelve?’
‘Because I was planning on killing twelve over a series of years, all during the Day of the Dead festivities.’
‘With the exception of your laptop, iPad and iPhone, our search of your home has yielded no incriminating evidence. Where do you keep your clothing, weapons and items associated with your crimes?’
‘I rent a double lock-up garage at the Woolton Village end of Menlove Avenue near to the block of flats.’
‘Does Annabelle pay for that?’
‘People send me donations. I’ve got over fifty-four thousand pounds in the bank at the moment. The bank statements and details are in the lock-up garage.’
Clay thought for a moment.
‘The key to the garage is on the back of the picture of you as a baby from Caroline’s room?’
‘The spare key.’
‘Tell me about your movements on the night Steven Jamieson was murdered?’
‘I went to the garage and dressed as Caroline. Black shoes, white socks, grey skirt, white blouse, grey V-neck cardigan, school tie, red duffel coat. I packed my bag and gathered my weapons. I walked across the golf course, I walked down Wheatcroft Road on to Mather Avenue. I didn’t see a soul. I turned left and walked to 699 Mather Avenue. I rang the bell. They opened the door. I dispensed justice. I came back the way I had come. Your IT people were right. I transferred the homework on to my laptop from my iPad.’
‘When you say you dispensed justice, what exactly did you do?’
‘I disabled the Human Abomination and his Slut Wife. I murdered him and opened her eyes forever to the filth they so loved and the pain they inflicted on so many others.’
‘You say they inflicted?’
‘Have you got the photograph, DS Hendricks?’
‘How do you know Carol White gave me a photograph?’
‘Alice Burns told me Carol White was a paedophile masquerading as a good cop. Alice told me she’d given you a picture and was pretending to mourn for the innocents.’
‘Carol White’s not a paedophile, Lucien. She’s a good woman.’
‘Have you seen that picture yet?’
Hendricks reached inside his jacket pocket.
‘No. I haven’t looked yet. I didn’t believe it had any direct impact on this investigation.’ And part of me couldn’t face it, he thought.
‘You ought to look at it, DS Hendricks.’
Hendricks opened the envelope with a sense of mounting dread and pulled out a single sheet of photographic paper, blank side up.
‘Turn it over,’ said Lucien. ‘Look at it.’
Hendricks turned it over on the table and looked at Clay.
‘Who’s the woman sexually abusing that bored little boy?’ asked Clay.
‘Frances Jamieson,’ said Hendricks. ‘Do you know who the boy is?’
Silence.
‘He’s one of millions. She was as bad as her husband,’ said Lucien.
‘So why didn’t you kill her?’ asked Clay.
‘Death was an easy option for the Slut Wife. She got away with it for years and hid what she was from the world. I’m genuinely sorry she died. I wanted her to live and be exposed for what she was.’
Lucien looked over his shoulder at the glass. ‘Am I doing well at telling the truth?’ Then he looked at Clay.
‘What’s Christine’s role in this?’ asked Clay.
‘She took the evidence away from the garage, cleaned it up, replenished the ropes and anything else I needed.
If I got caught, she was going to take the fall for my so-called crimes, make it look like it was all her doing.’
Clay took the DNA results from the envelope. ‘I can well understand why she’d do that for you. When our forensic lab technician was looking at the DNA for subjects involved in this investigation, she came up with this.’
She spread the data out in front of Lucien. ‘These numbers refer to microsatellites, markers found in a person’s DNA. The pink numbers belong to your mother. The blue column is your father. Your column is in the middle, Lucien. The combination of pink and blue numbers makes you the son of these two individuals. Genetically you’re XY, that casts you as a male.’
He looked at the numbers. ‘They match.’
‘You’re a match, you and Christine, mother and son. How aware are you of your biological background?’
Lucien looked at the three columns of DNA.
‘Who is Annabelle to you, Lucien?’
‘She’s my grandmother.’
‘Who’s your mother?’
‘Christine Burns. She changed her name by deed poll to Green when we all moved to Liverpool when I was a newborn. She wanted a new start. I know all this.’
‘Where were you born?’
‘Sheffield.’
‘Do you know who your father is?’
He fell into a conflicted silence.
‘He’s dead.’ He looked over his shoulder at the glass.
‘Who’s your father, Lucien?’
‘I killed him. Christine was fourteen when she gave birth to me. Steven Jamieson paid us off every month for years through that scumbag solicitor of his. My father’s name was Steven Jamieson. And I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life because he’s finally dead and I’m responsible for that.’
‘Did the Jamiesons follow you to Liverpool?’
‘I don’t know the truth of that.’ Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘My life was over before it had even begun. I’ve spoken, and I’ve spoken enough.’
Lucien stood up and walked to the glass. ‘Did I do well? Did I do well in speaking the truth?’
Lucien looked at his reflection in the glass, imagining Vindici watching and approving. In the empty room behind the glass nothing moved and no sound was made.
‘What am I?’ Lucien asked his reflection. ‘Who are you, Vindici? Hmm? You are... who? You understand me, don’t you? You understand I’m neither one thing nor another. But you accept me for what I am because you understand the horror that brought me into this world; you understand the horror that you tried to fix. You understand that I have done the same thing. I know you, Justin. I accept you for what you are as you accept me.’
He placed the palms of his hands against the glass and pressed his cheek between his hands, as if proffering his face for a kiss.
‘And I love you for that.’
114
2.35 am
When Samantha Wilson opened the door of her mother’s house in Dundonald Road, Stone was completely taken aback by her appearance. She was barefoot and dressed in a sleeveless evening gown that was as red as the lipstick she had applied, her eyelids were black and thick mascara fanned out her eyelashes. She reminded him of a vamp from a film noir.
‘Do you like the way I look, Karl?’
She turned, walked back inside the house and Stone followed, closing the door and sensing trouble.
She stood in the kitchen at the back of the house with a glass of red wine in her hand. Thick lipstick was printed on to the rim of the glass and there was another glass on the table and an almost empty bottle of red wine.
‘Yes, you look just sensational. Are you going out?’
She shook her head. ‘Where could I go to? You took a long time.’
Stone took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the end of his nose and lifted the lid of the kitchen bin with the pedal to throw in his tissue. In the bin, he saw two empty wine bottles.
‘I’ve really only got one question for you, Sammy.’
‘Sit down.’
‘I’ll stand, thank you.’
‘My mother’s an alcoholic, did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t know that.’
‘Would you care for a glass of wine?’
‘I’m on duty. What’s this piece of information you have for me about the investigation into your father’s murder?’
She placed her glass down on the table and, turning her back to Stone, poured herself another glass of red.
‘Sammy, can I take a picture of you on my phone?’
‘No problem.’ She looked profoundly pleased.
He pointed the phone at her, selected camera and took snapshots of the woman in front of him.
He forced himself to smile at her.
‘That’s better. You looked like Mr Grumpy up until then.’
‘I’ve seen some strange and difficult things this evening, and I’m very tired.’
‘You could always have a lie down.’ She pointed at the ceiling.
‘So, what’s this information about the investigation into your father’s murder?’
‘The information? Oh yes, I’ll come to that later.’
‘OK.’ He smiled but wanted to scream at her to stop playing mind games.
‘Cheers.’ She raised her glass and took a large sip. ‘I’ve got a question for you, Karl, Karly Warly. Who’s this Christine Green you’ve been going to visit?’
‘I told you earlier. She currently in our custody.’
‘Cosy. Wander down to the cell to pay her a little visit? Comfort her? Tell her it’s all going to be all right. Give her a little back rub, whisper sweet, smutty nothings in her ear.’ The muscles in her face shifted like clouds over a glacial mountain, in varying degrees of unpredictable darkness.
‘No, I most certainly do not go down to her cell and engage her in physical or emotional contact. Each cell is hooked up to CCTV that’s played out live twenty-four/seven to a bank of screens on the front desk where they are constantly supervised by the custody sergeant and his assistant constables. If I did any such thing I would be immediately suspended and very quickly drummed out of the police.’
Her entire body shifted with relief.
‘What did you want to tell me about your father?’
She smiled at him, reached out a hand. He stepped past her and asked, ‘Can I use your bathroom?’
‘What?’
Stone walked out of the kitchen and headed directly to the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, Sammy blocked his way.
‘I’ll tell you about my father,’ said Sammy.
‘Tell me as I go upstairs.’
‘He wasn’t a paedophile.’
‘Pardon?’
She shook her head and he pressed record on his phone.
‘Say that again, Sammy.’
‘My father, David Wilson, was not, repeat, was not a paedophile.’
‘What about your allegations that he raped you when you were a teenager?’
‘Lies. I lied. I was an attention-seeking liar back then, but I’ve grown up now and I don’t tell lies which is why I’m coming out with the truth, see.’
‘He never raped you at all, ever?’
‘He never laid a finger on me. He didn’t so much as slap me on the back of the hand when I was being naughty, when I was little.’
‘What about all the paedophile porn we found on his laptop?’
She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘He was almost a cretin when it came to IT. I downloaded it to give substance to my lies, but I’m not lying any longer.’
He thought of Sandra Wilson and a sickness spread through him.
Stone looked up the stairs and called, ‘Mrs Wilson?’
‘Why do you want to talk to her when you can be with me?’
He pushed her out of the way, hurried up the stairs.
‘He was an ordinary decent man and I made up copious malicious lies about him...’ She followed.
Stone went to the small front bedroom, turn
ed on the light, saw that Mrs Wilson was fast asleep and breathing.
‘Mrs Wilson?’ he double-checked.
Her eyes fluttered open and she looked like a woman waking into a dream. ‘You?’ She sounded happy but very tired.
‘Just checking you’re OK.’
‘More than OK. Sammy’s come back to me. We’re going to be together. We’re going... to be... so...’ Her eyes closed. ‘...happy.’
He left Mrs Wilson, turned off the light and looked at Sammy, who was standing at the top of the stairs and watching him as if he was the last man on earth. Opening the bedroom door that Sandra Wilson had once shared with her husband David, he looked inside and remembered what he had witnessed when he arrived at the murder scene.
David Wilson, castrated, face down and tied to the mattress, his brain mutilated by Lucien Burns’s bicycle spoke.
‘We’re going to be happy, so happy.’ Sammy opened a back bedroom door. ‘This is my room, Karl. Do you want to have a look?’
‘Why?’
‘Why what, darling?’
‘Why did you lie about your father to me? Why did you set him up with the porn on his laptop?’
‘I know you want me and I know how badly you want me. But I know, too, what’s keeping you back from me. We both do, don’t we?’
‘Give me a clue.’
‘You think – because you believe that my father had sex with me – that I am damaged goods. So I’m coming clean and telling the truth so that we can remove that obstacle and take our relationship to the next level. Silly lies, that’s all it was.’
Stone walked to the top of the stairs. ‘Goodbye, Sammy. I hope your mother’s right and that you’ll both be very happy together.’
‘Are you going?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you coming back?’
‘No.’
He walked down the stairs, stopped when she said, ‘Karl? I could always put a complaint in about you. I could always complain about how you tried to touch me inappropriately in my mother’s house as she slept.’
‘Which isn’t true, is it, Sammy?’
‘No, it’s not true. You’ve always been a perfect gentleman around me. But it’d be my word against yours.’
He carried on to the bottom of the stairs. ‘No, it wouldn’t be your word against mine. It’d be your malicious threat to me and your admission that you lied and framed your father. I’ve recorded the things you’ve said on my phone.’ Stone showed her his phone. ‘Still recording, Sammy.’
