by Shaun Hutson
She yelped and slapped his shoulder, chuckling.
At thirty, Cross was two years her junior, but his face was heavily lined for one so young. Cath was aware of lines on her own face, but around the eyes she preferred to call them laughter lines. It was as good a euphemism as she could think of.
‘Do you think anyone at the office knows about us?’ Cross said, taking a sip of his drink.
She lay back, stretching her legs again, admiring their shape herself.
Cross ran a hand along her right calf and thigh, stroking the smooth flesh there.
‘I doubt it, we’ve been pretty discreet. Besides, nobody gives a shit. They’re too concerned with their own lives or how to fill the paper. Nobody cares about what we’re doing.’
‘What about you?’ he said, looking into her green eyes. ‘Do you care?’
‘Phil, don’t start this again,’ she said, smiling.
‘It’s not funny,’ he snapped.
‘I’m not laughing, am I?’
‘You smiled.’
‘What do you want me to do? Break down in tears?’ she swigged her beer. ‘Look, what we do together is fun, right? I enjoy being with you, but it’s not a big romance.’
‘Is that because you don’t want it to be?’
‘Can we save the big inquests for some other time, please?’
‘We just finished making love, I think that’s a fair enough time to ask about feelings, isn’t it?’
‘Phil, we just finished fucking,’ she smiled and touched his cheek. ‘There is a difference.’
Cross looked at her with accusing eyes. ‘You can be a right bitch sometimes,’
he said, acidly.
‘Sorry,’ she said, shrugging, taking a sip from the can. ‘I just don’t want you getting carried away with what’s going on between us.’
‘According to you, there’s not much to get carried away with anyway.’
Cath took one last sip of beer then clambered off the bed, pulling on her leggings.
‘What are you doing?’ Cross demanded.
‘Getting dressed. I’m going home.’
‘I thought you were staying the night.’
‘I didn’t say that, did I?’ she retorted, pulling on a denim shirt and fastening it.
‘I just thought…’
She kissed him on the forehead.
‘You think too much,’ she said, pushing her feet into her trainers.
He pulled on his jeans and followed her through into the sitting room, watching as she gathered up her handbag and jacket, checking in the pocket for her car keys.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she said, kissing him lightly on the lips.
Cross pulled her more tightly to him, easing his tongue past the soft flesh, happy when she responded.
‘You’re a pain in the arse.’ he said, attempting a smile. ‘No wonder that copper at Euston got so uptight when he saw you.’
She nodded.
‘I suppose he had his reasons,’ she said dismissively, then turned and headed towards the hall. ‘I can find my own way out, Phil, and
besides …’ she nodded towards his crotch, ‘you don’t want to frighten the neighbours, do you?’ She giggled.
Cross looked down to see that his flies were undone.
As he hurried to zip them up, Cath stepped out.
He heard the door close behind her.
The photographer stood alone for a moment then sat down on the edge of the sofa, running both hands through his hair.
He could smell her perfume on his fingers.
He’d be able to smell it in the bedroom too.
He always could.
As he got to his feet, the phone rang.
Eight
‘What’s your name?’
Shanine Connor jumped slightly in her seat as the silence inside the car was suddenly broken.
She glanced across at the driver who took his eyes off the road momentarily and smiled at her.
Her own expression remained blank. Instead, she ran cautious eyes over the driver’s features. He was in his early forties, his face a little on the chubby side, his hair thick and lustrous, although in the gloomy interior of the Astra it was difficult to tell what colour.
The only other light was supplied by the lamps on the M60. There wasn’t much traffic travelling in either
direction, and even when vehicles did pass by on the opposite carriageway, Shanine hardly noticed their headlamps. She was too concerned with checking the wing mirror beside her. Glancing in it every few moments.
Checking.
She was sure she’d seen a dark blue Nissan tuck in behind the Astra about twelve miles back.
She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t still there.
Following?
The Nissan had had plenty of opportunities to overtake, but she was sure it had sat in the inside lane, keeping a respectable distance, sometimes dropping back out of sight, sometimes coming closer.
Wasn’t it?
She held the holdall close to her, one hand resting on the side of the bag where she had secreted the kitchen knife.
The driver had offered to put the holdall in the back seat for her but she’d shaken her head vehemently, preferring to keep it near.
He’d told her his name but she’d forgotten it. He’d been trying to make conversation for the last fifteen miles, ever since they left Manchester. All she could remember was that he’d said he was heading back home to Liverpool but otherwise her attention was elsewhere.
Like on the Nissan that was following?
Following?
She gazed into the wing mirror again and could see no sign of the vehicle.
Her heart began to thud a little faster against her ribs.
‘I said what’s your name?’ the driver repeated, again looking at her.
‘Shanine’ she told him without looking round.
‘That’s a nice name’ he said, tapping on his steering wheel gently, muttering to himself.
The car began to slow down.
‘What’s wrong?’ Shanine asked, a note of anxiety in her voice.
‘Bloody roadworks,’ the driver groaned. ‘It’s going down to one lane. We’ll be at a crawl for the next few miles.’
Shanine shot a glance at the wing mirror.
No sign of the Nissan.
‘They’re always doing something to this road,’ the driver continued. ‘Soft bastards.’ He looked at her and smiled. ‘Excuse my French.’
Shanine managed a nervous smile.
‘So why are you leaving Manchester?’ the driver asked. ‘I mean, I can understand why, but I was just curious, like. I mean, I only go there because I have to work there.’
She didn’t answer, preoccupied with what was visible in the wing mirror.
The Astra had slowed right down to around twenty miles an hour now, as the driver guided it between two rows of plastic bollards.
‘You seemed in a hurry to get away,’ he said, grinning. ‘Someone chasing you?’
She turned to face him, the colour draining from her face.
‘What makes you say that?’ she demanded.
He glanced across at her, saw the concern etched across her features.
‘Just joking.’ he said, almost apologetically.
Shanine spotted the Nissan.
The road had opened out into two lanes again, and the Nissan was moving up fast behind the Astra.
They were approaching a slip road, leading to a service area.
‘Can you drop me off there?’ Shanine asked.
‘I can take you all the way to Liverpool if you want.’
‘No’ she said, watching as the Nissan swept past, its rear lights disappearing.
She felt her heart slow its frantic pounding and slumped back in her seat.
‘Where are you going, anyway?’ the driver asked.
‘Drop me on the slip road, you don’t have to drive right up to the service station’ she told him, ignoring the question.
‘Don’t be soft’ he muttered, indicating, guiding the Astra up the incline.
She was reaching for the door handle as soon as he began to slow down.
‘Thanks’ she said, clambering out.
‘I can take you further …’ he began, but she was already out of the car, walking hurriedly towards the Little Chef which lay beyond the petrol station area of the services.
The Astra driver watched her for a moment, then stuck the car in gear and drove on. As he passed he saw her entering the restaurant. She paused at the door and looked anxiously around her before stepping inside.
The driver glanced into his rear-view mirror, wondering about Shanine.
What was she running from?
Boyfriend? Parents?
As he guided the car back onto the slip road that took him back to the motorway, he pondered.
Had he known the truth he might well have been relieved she was no longer in his car.
Nine
Catherine Reed could hear the sound as she turned the key in the door.
A high-pitched beeping noise which came every three seconds. The audio alert on her answering machine. There were messages.
She pushed the door of the flat closed and locked it, pulling the chain across; then she put down her car keys and door key on the small wooden table just inside the hallway.
The drive from Camden Town to her flat in Hammersmith had taken longer than usual. There’d been some sort of security alert in Central London and traffic had been diverted. Cath felt as if she’d been stuck behind the wheel of her Fiat for hours.
She pressed the Play button on the answering machine and the metallic voice announced that she had five messages.
She turned up the volume on the machine and wandered into the sitting room where she kicked off her trainers, sitting on the edge of the sofa as she massaged her feet.
The first message was from a friend, asking if she wanted to meet up for a few drinks in a couple of days’ time.
Cath padded across to the TV set and flicked it on, pressing the mute button on the remote so that just the picture glowed before her.
The second message was a guy called John Linley. She’d met him at the opening
of an art exhibition about a week ago and, for reasons which she couldn’t remember now, she’d given him her number. The message invited her to call back.
Cath shook her head.
She sat looking at the silent TV screen as the messages continued.
A wrong number.
The caller had even waited for the tone to apologise.
On the screen, two politicians were gesturing at each other, their posturing somehow more interesting without the benefit of their empty words.
She changed channels.
Boxing.
Cath pressed another button.
A seventies sit-com - at least she guessed it was, from the way the characters were dressed.
She pressed again.
A Western. She peered at it for a moment, recognised William Holden and Ernest Borgnine and smiled to herself.
“The Wild Bunch,’ she said, chuckling as the ad break caption confirmed her guess.
The fourth message on the machine was from her brother.
Cath got to her feet and walked back to the machine, jabbed the Replay button and listened more carefully to the words.
‘Cath, it’s Frank. Give me a call tomorrow night will you?
‘ need to talk to you. Any time after nine o’clock. Hope you’re well. See you.’
She scribbled a note on the small pad beside the phone and listened to the last message.
It was from her publisher.
They loved the book, there were just a couple of points they’d like to discuss if she had the time tomorrow. Could she ring the senior editor?
Thank you. End of messages.
Perhaps they were going to tell her the publication date, she mused. Inform her when they were going to pay her the remainder of the advance. She’d already spent the first part. The flat had needed decorating and it had come in handy for that. The publisher seemed to have a great deal of faith in the book though: ‘true crime’, they had told her, was a big seller. With her background in journalism she had the contacts. The book had been relatively easy to write and she’d finished the first draft in under three months.
Mind to Murder was Cath’s examination of some of the twentieth century’s most notorious murderers and, more to the point, the public fascination with them.
What was it about people like Brady and Hindley, Peter Sutcliffe, Charles Manson, Dennis Nilson, Fred West and dozens of others like them that the public found so intriguing?
Cath had already been commissioned to write a second book along similar lines about violence in the movies, but that was a long way off. She hoped the two non-fiction books could be a stepping stone to what she really craved: to have a novel published.
She pressed Rewind and listened to her brother’s message again.
He sounded fine. Chirpy, in fact.
Surprising, considering the circumstances he was caught up in at the moment.
She glanced at her watch and wondered whether she should ring him now, then decided against it.
She went into the kitchen and switched on the ghetto-blaster, which was propped on top of the microwave: the sound of Clannad filled the room. Cath filled the kettle and switched it on, dropping a tea bag and some milk into a mug which she first rinsed beneath the tap.
While she waited for the kettle to boil she walked back into the sitting room, glancing at the silent TV screen, watching as the bridge the Wild Bunch had rigged with dynamite exploded, sending Robert Ryan and his bounty hunters into the river below.
Cath stopped for a moment, struck by how incongruous the brutal image was with the lilting sounds drifting from the kitchen.
From the top of the television two photos stared back at her.
One was of her parents.
They had emigrated to Canada six years ago.
Cath hadn’t seen them since. She spoke to them every two or three months. They seemed to be enjoying themselves there, both retired. And they were proud of her achievements. Proud of both their children.
She wondered what they would have thought of Frank’s situation.
It was he who looked out at her from the other photo.
Five years older than Cath, he was powerfully built with a bushy moustache, flecked with grey like his hair.
In the picture he was sitting on a park bench with her, smiling happily, his arm around her shoulder.
The photo had been taken about eight years ago, the day after she began working for the Express, and shortly after he’d secured the deputy headmaster’s job at the school where he taught.
Happy days.
And now?
She crossed to the photo and picked it up, studying his features more carefully.
It was obvious the photo was old.
Frank was smiling.
He had something to smile about.
Cath heard the kettle boiling and set the photo back in position atop the television.
She’d spoken to him three days ago. His message seemed to imply there was something new to report.
As she headed back towards the kitchen she wondered what it could be.
It had got to the stage where she feared his calls.
Ten
The silence enveloped James Talbot like a shroud.
He pushed the front door shut behind him, muttering to himself as he stepped on the letters lying on the mat. He picked them up and carried them through into the sitting room, dropping the mail onto the coffee table without even glancing at it.
Christ, he needed a cigarette!
Instead he crossed to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large whiskey, swallowing most of the soothing liquid in one gulp.
The cabinet, like most of the furniture in the house, was old. Some was in need of repair, some of replacement. It was like stepping ba
ck into the fifties, walking inside the place. A huge mahogany chest of drawers stood against one wall, the dark wood matching the coffee table and also the small table upon which the television was perched. The electronic contraption looked out of place amidst such relics of the past.
The walls needed a lick of paint too.
Talbot could remember that sickly shade of magnolia from when he was a small child.
His father had painted the whole bloody house in that colour.
His father.
Was it really twenty-six years since he’d died?
It seemed like an eternity. Sometimes it felt as if he’d never even lived.
Like a fading photograph, the image of his father had slowly grown more and more faint in Talbot’s mind, until he could barely recall the man’s features.
He heard shouting outside and crossed to the window, peering out to see a group of young lads passing by, chatting loudly and animatedly.
The street was littered with pieces of crumpled paper and rubbish, blown about like bizarre tumbleweeds as the cold breeze swept through the streets.
The streets always looked like this after a match.
From the front window of the house in Gillespie Road, Talbot could see the
outline of Arsenal’s stadium.
His father had taken him along to matches when he’d been a child, at first too young to realise what was
going on, aware only of the crush and throng of so many bodies packed into terraces. Then, as he’d got older, he’d travelled the short distance to the stadium for every home game. Then he’d started going to away games too.
It gave him an excuse to get out of the house for a few hours.
To get away.
To be alone.
Strange, he’d always thought, to seek solitude amongst thirty thousand people, but it seemed to have the desired effect.
And then he would return.
To the smell of the drink. The shouts and screams.
The blood.
Talbot swallowed what was left in his glass and poured himself another. He crossed to the sofa where he flopped down on the large flower-patterned seats, rolling the whiskey glass between his large palms, gazed at the letters on the table, as if the very effort of reaching for them required some superhuman feat of will.
