The Nightmare Place

by Mosby, Steve

  ‘You don’t think she’d remember leaving the window open?’

  ‘I don’t want to assume anything. You know what the weather’s been like. It’s sweltering. Everyone opens their windows. Maybe not everyone closes them properly again.’

  ‘It’s a twelve-point lock,’ Chris said. ‘You need a key to open it from the inside. As soon as the handle’s turned back down, it locks automatically. Clicks in place. It’s like the ones I’ve got at home.’

  ‘I’m aware of how windows work, Chris. Even if I hadn’t been before, it’s not like it hasn’t come up.’

  ‘Exactly. And it keeps coming down to this. When you’ve had the window open, and you pull it closed in the evening, or whatever, you automatically turn the handle down.’

  ‘I do. You do. He, she or it does.’ I was walking too quickly, and he was struggling to keep up. ‘But what do we know about what Julie Kennedy did? Even she doesn’t remember. Maybe the phone rang as she was closing the window. Maybe there was a wasp buzzing around outside, and she just pulled it to for a bit and then forgot about it.’

  We reached the main foyer and headed out of the doors. The midday air was solid and hot, and after the artificial light of the hospital, the brightness ahead of us was momentarily blinding.

  ‘You’re grasping at straws,’ Chris said.

  I didn’t say anything, because I knew he was right, and I don’t like to admit such a thing at the best of times.

  But, yes, grasping at straws. Julie’s recollections matched those of the previous victims. In each case, the house had been secure when they went to bed: all the doors were locked, with any sash jams, chains or bolts in place. When the police arrived, they found a single downstairs window open. That had to be the exit point for the attacker, as it would have been impossible for him to leave via a door and then apply bolts and sash jams from outside. But we had no idea how he was entering the properties in the first place.

  The open windows were undamaged. With those kinds of locks – and I know how windows work – you can’t lever them open from the outside because the frames snap off. It’s a security feature. There’s no access to the locks from the outside either. But none of the victims’ windows had been drilled.

  One possibility was that there was some way of opening the windows that our team hadn’t come across yet. If so, the numerous security experts we’d consulted hadn’t come across it either. Another was that the victims were wrong: they were misremembering, and had actually left the windows ajar without realising.

  The third possibility was that he was gaining access in some other way. But there were difficulties with that too. None of the five victims was missing house keys, and two of them had never even shared the property with anyone else. If the man had got in through a door, it would have to have been during the day, while they were out, because the sash jams and chains were on at night. That implied a whole different level of crazy, which was then compounded by the open window. Because if he could unlock a door somehow, why leave the house that way?

  As we reached the car, I pulled out my keys and pressed the security button. The vehicle flashed and clicked once.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Although it’s not that I’m grasping at straws. I’m playing devil’s advocate.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Whatever. I’m driving, by the way.’

  We set off. I was still thinking about it, of course.

  ‘It can’t be the windows,’ I said eventually.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Because that would imply our man was playing a numbers game. A small number of people forget to close their windows, and he’s just opportunistic and lucky. But nobody’s that lucky.’

  Chris nodded. ‘Someone would have clocked him by now.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s that. And he’s not opportunistic, is he? These women are specific targets. He’s not fishing around at random.’

  He didn’t say anything, and I felt the frustration rising again. Because the terrible truth of the matter was that we simply didn’t know.

  Back at the department, I prepared myself for the incident room. Everything was quiet as we walked along the corridor, but as we got closer to the main suite, I began to hear it: the thrum of activity on the other side of the wall. It’s an old building, and the walls are thin. It was easy to imagine that if I put my hand on the one to the left, I’d feel the vibration and the heat. Directly outside the door, the noise within was audible.

  No pressure, I thought as I opened it.

  It was like walking into a concert that had already started. Over the last two and a half months, our case had graduated from a small-scale initial investigation to become the department’s primary concern; five victims in, we had every single available officer seconded to us, and the largest incident room in the building. Even so, with at least forty police working in here at any one time, it always felt crowded. There were even more here right now, crammed in along the walls and standing in the central aisle, all ready to receive the daily briefing and their updated action schedules.

  I sensed a number of eyes on us as we entered, then more and more as we eased our way through the throng. The noise abated slightly as people gradually realised that the main act had arrived. Pressing through, I noticed the heat most of all; the air had the particular warmth that comes from too many people being too close together, and every time I glanced around, I saw damp hair, beads of sweat on people’s foreheads. The desk fans were all on, but they weren’t accomplishing much.

  DCI Drake was leaning against the wall, close to the front of the room. Arms folded, face stern – no sweat on him, of course. For Drake, the production of sweat was something for other people to endure and worry about, and if they weren’t currently doing so, he could certainly help them with that.

  No pressure …

  The area at the far end of the room remained clear. It was a mini stage of sorts, raised only by a couple of inches, and there were numerous tales of unlucky detectives inadvertently face-planting on their way to a nervy presentation. No such disasters for Chris or me today. He moved to the microphone that had been set up, while I walked over to the whiteboards along the back wall. They covered it floor to ceiling, all the way across. I turned my back on the expectant gazes for a few moments, and stared at the boards instead.

  Photographs of the five victims were taped across them, with information scribbled in by various hands around each one. It was all on the computers, but I found it helpful to have a visual cue as well – to be able to see as much of it all at once as I could. So here were almost countless names, dates and addresses, people of interest. We’d assumed the attacker would be someone known to the first victim, Katie Rayland, so every possible male acquaintance, every angry ex-boyfriend, had been tracked down and ruled out of the inquiry. That theory had been more or less discarded as the number of assaults rose, and a connection between the victims proved apparently non-existent. The names were still there, just in case, but it was the victims I was interested in right now.

  I stared at the photographs, oblivious to the room behind me. Superficially, the women all looked very different. They ranged in height, ethnic origin, hair colour, eye colour. But still, what I’d said to Chris in the car was true: I was sure they had been targeted. Because it was clear that our man had a type. He liked women in their mid to late twenties. He liked women who lived alone. And – the most obvious similarity between them – he liked women who would be considered conventionally very attractive. All five were, in their separate ways, exceptionally beautiful.

  Of course, liked wasn’t the right word, except in the most tangential sense. In reality, he hated his victims. Along with his size and strength, each of them had emphasised the hate that they’d felt coming off him in waves. It seemed increasingly obvious to me that he hated them for what they were, rather than who. Young, attractive and successful, they were the kind of women you’d imagine finding on the arm of an alpha male, being shown off l
ike a trophy or a badge.

  If his hatred was obvious, something else was too. These photographs had all been taken after the assaults, to detail the injuries the women had received. And when you moved your gaze along the line of images, a strange thing happened. Despite the disparity in their appearances, you could trace along from the first picture to the last, from Katie Rayland to Julie Kennedy, and see damage accumulating. The victims merged into one, so that the effect was almost of viewing the cumulative destruction of the idea of a beautiful woman. While the rapes remained a constant feature, the assaults were becoming more vicious, more extended, more central to the crime. Our man was escalating. Julie had nearly been killed. It was only a matter of time before somebody actually was …

  Beside me, Chris coughed.

  The room had fallen totally silent. I stepped away from the boards and joined him at the table, not apologising or even acknowledging the delay. Not caring, in fact, what anyone thought, including Drake, leaning there with his knotty little forearms and his expression of impatience.

  No pressure.

  It wasn’t true.

  Five

  That evening, after work, I went to visit John.

  It was a pleasure as well as a duty. John wasn’t my father, but he might as well have been, and a part of me actually thought of him that way – not that I’d ever admit it to him, of course. Increasingly, though, I’d started dreading these weekly visits. Dreading seeing him.

  My mother died young, so I didn’t have the chance to watch her age properly, and I never knew my real father at all. The estate housing I grew up in was single-storey and ramshackle, frequently dirty and untidy, and from an early age I was often left alone. There would be times I’d wake up in the morning and find my mother passed out on the settee, empty cans of beer littering the carpet and the smell of weed still hanging in the air. Other times I’d wake up and she wouldn’t be there at all. And when she was elsewhere, I never had the remotest impression that she might be thinking about me, or worrying.

  Despite all that, I loved her fiercely. My memories of her are nothing but fond. When she was around, she was the most attentive and caring person on the planet. I remember her as a young woman made old before her time: always unkempt, wearing tatty jeans and cardigans, and often – incongruously – a cheap crimson beret. Thinking about her as an adult, I notice an air of regret about her: the knowledge that her life had not gone the way she wanted, and that even on those reduced terms, she was failing to live it the way she ought to. I see the sadness of an inebriated woman dancing happily, clicking her fingers, in an almost empty pub on a sunny afternoon.

  There are other memories, of course. I remember the men in drab grey suits who would turn up at our house. As a child, I couldn’t understand why my mother allowed them in; she clearly didn’t want them there. I’d always know when they were coming, because she’d suddenly be far more present, and would enlist me in frantic cleaning exercises, usually pretending it was a game. When they arrived, I’d sit patiently beside her on the settee, and look at the men seated across from us, sad expressions on their faces. I’d notice the difference between them and my mother – that she would always try to look happy, even when really she was feeling sad and serious, while the men were the opposite.

  I didn’t know why they were there, only that it had something to do with me and my mother, and whether we loved each other enough. Sometimes I’d cling to her arm while she talked to them, her voice more careful and controlled than I was used to. There was no raucous laugh; it was as though a dial had been turned down inside her. She’d place a reassuring hand on my own. Everything’s going to be okay. And that was the kind of life we had, looking back. Never really okay, but always going to be.

  I think it’s to her credit that I didn’t notice those things until I was an adult. Whatever flaws she stumbled so frequently over, she tried to do her best, and she loved me, and I loved her. In my head, I try to keep her frozen at that age, barely older than I am now. There are later images, of course, as the carefree young woman who liked to drink and should probably have cut down transitioned into the woman who needed to, and then the woman for whom it was too late. The woman lying in her final bed, in the hospice, as small and thin as a child. But I try not to think about that. The point is, I never got to see her age.

  Not so with John.

  He still lived in the same house he always had: a slim terrace only a short distance from the estate I’d grown up on. The road sloped steeply upwards, and John’s house was close to the top, so that, standing in the overgrown front garden, you could see the spread of cheap houses stretching out in the distance.

  Tonight, his house key in my hand, I stood there for a moment, looking down at it. From this far away, the haphazard sprawl of tiny buildings and warren of pathways looked peaceful and still. The sky above was pale lilac, with threads of cloud that appeared dull green in the slowly dying light. I tried to pick out the waste ground, and eventually found it. There were tiny figures crossing it: children, I imagined. At this distance, they seemed to be dissolving and rolling rather than walking.

  As always, the sight of it made me think about the nightmare.

  Although I had a key to John’s house, I knocked hard before unlocking the front door, then called out his name as I let myself in.

  ‘It’s only me.’

  The hallway smelled musty, and my shoes scuffed up an itch of dust from the threadbare fuzz of the carpet. There was another odour, as well, which I found hard to place at first. It smelled like cats, I decided finally, but John didn’t have any pets.

  He came slowly out of the front room to meet me. These days, he walked with a shuffling gait, as though he was a puppet on strings that were growing increasingly slack and could no longer lift his knees properly. Sometimes he looked as though he was trying to run on the spot. A proud man, he continued to insist he was fine – and perhaps he could still manage for now. But we both knew full well that the day was approaching when he would not be able to.

  ‘Zoe.’

  I steeled myself as he emerged into the hallway, and it almost wasn’t enough. It had only been a week since my last visit, yet he looked months older than he had then. He was dressed in a dark suit a few sizes too big for him. Every time I saw him, the suit seemed a little looser, and yet he never bought a smaller size, as though he couldn’t quite believe – or refused to admit to himself – that his body was diminishing. But it was. Former detective John Carlton looked every one of his seventy-three years, and more besides.

  It didn’t feel so long ago that I’d first met John – when I was fifteen, under arrest, and sitting on the wrong side of a desk from the tired but concerned man tasked with facing down my clever, cocksure teenage attitude. It wasn’t that long ago. But the difference between that smart, neat sergeant, still youthful despite the widow’s peak and worry lines, and the man before me now was stark.

  I swallowed the emotions and walked to meet him, embracing him carefully. His body felt like a fragile cage of bones.

  ‘Hello, John. It’s good to see you.’

  ‘And you.’ He placed his hands on my arms; they were shaking slightly. ‘What a lovely surprise to see you.’

  Surprise. It worried me, that, because it wasn’t like I didn’t call in every week. Over the past months, I’d begun to notice that his mind was deteriorating. Increasingly he seemed to remember less, and sometimes I could see him grasping for thoughts and words, not always finding what he was searching for. He’d just shake his head: no, it’s gone. It was as though memories were being packaged away as he prepared to move out of his life altogether.

  I didn’t want to accept that.

  ‘Just thought I’d stop by to bother you,’ I said. ‘You know – the way you used to pester me, all those years ago.’

  That brought a smile.

  ‘Well, that’s nice of you. Come through.’

  I followed him patiently into the front room. The carpet here was beige and f
aded, and the fabric on the armchairs was worn away. Sitting on them was as comfortable as sitting on hard, bare wood. The coffee table was strewn with magazines and piles of unopened post, while bundles of old newspapers rested against one wall, below the closed front curtains.

  It was always sad to see, because he’d been so fastidious and precise in the past – fussy, even. Old age had enforced untidiness upon him. It had actually seemed like the house of an old man from the beginning, as though he’d had it fixed and fitted in expectation of these later years, when he’d finally catch up with it. All that had really changed was that the three-bedroom property had become too large for him. But that was easily solved, I supposed, by closing a few doors and simply not opening them again. His living space shrinking alongside him.

  ‘Have a seat.’ John eased himself down into a chair. The movement caused him to wince; I knew he was increasingly having trouble with his legs. ‘I’ll make us coffee in a minute.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ I said quickly. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘All right. But tell me how you’ve been first.’

  ‘Not great. I talked to victim five today.’

  I updated him on the creeper case first of all. One thing I liked about talking to John was that there was never any need to spare him the details. However fragile and doddery he looked, he was not as vulnerable as he appeared; as police, he had seen it all. Unlike my friends, the partners who had passed through my life, John was a confidant who needed no protection from the harshness of what I did.

  I finished with the chewing-out that Chris and I had received from Drake after the briefing.

  ‘Results, results, results.’ I made a yapping motion with my hand. ‘You can imagine. From the way he talked to us, you’d think we hadn’t been working flat out on this for weeks.’

  John chuckled. ‘I remember Drake. Always a pipsqueak.’