by Sam Millar
“Oh, sorry about that,” mumbled Jack, cursing his stupidly at believing Jeremiah had already left.
“That … that’s okay,” said Jeremiah, looking slightly rattled.
“Did you get a load off your mind?” asked a grinning Benson as Jeremiah walked through the door of the interrogation room. To Benson’s delight, Jeremiah looked shaken.
Seemingly mortified, Jeremiah ignored the remark. The sudden and odd appearance of the man in the toilet had frightened him. A few seconds later, he re-seated himself, before clearing his throat with a cough. “I know you’re only doing your duty, Detective Benson, and I apologise for my outburst earlier. It’s just such a preposterous idea. Joe wouldn’t hurt a fly. Really. He’s a very kind-hearted person.”
Benson sipped the tepid coffee. It must have tasted bitter. He made a face just as the last sentence crawled from Jeremiah’s mouth.
“Sometimes, Mister Grazier, we never really know what hides beneath the surface of skin and bones—all that complicated machinery. All it takes is for one of the wires to shake loose, disrupt the entire process of the delicate engine.”
“I’ve known Joe most of my life. He is not a bad person.”
“Knowing a person doesn’t make him good, Mister Grazier. Didn’t God know Lucifer for quite a while, the best of buddies at one time? Then old Luc had to spoil everything by growing a tail and fucking horns.”
There was a noticeable shift in Jeremiah’s body. His face tightened.
“I don’t much care for your words, Detective Benson.”
Rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, Benson exposed massive arms that had put the fear of god into numerous suspects, over the years. Looking every part the fearsome pugilist he had once been, he placed his pork-chop hands inches from Jeremiah’s. He could have been a butcher, weighing up the best possible way to slaughter a nervous beast.
“I get a lot of complaints like that, Mister Grazier. My wife has told me the exact same thing.”
Jeremiah stiffened, but no words left his mouth.
For the next few minutes, Benson flipped the pages of his notepad, checking his notes. Occasionally, he looked at Jeremiah, and smiled.
Jeremiah did not smile back.
“You’ve been a great help to us, Mister Grazier. I want to thank you for your time. You can go now.”
Looking slightly relieved, Jeremiah stood and eased himself away from the table. Calmer now, he asked: “You will do your best to locate Joe, let him know that things are not always as dark as they seem? Of that, I’m entirely certain.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, Mister Grazier. We are going to do our damnedest to locate your friend. Of that, I’m entirely certain.”
“Well? What did you make of him?” asked Benson, entering the observation room.
Jack shrugged. “Hard to determine from here. He seemed a bit nervous, but then most people are—especially when coming into contact with a big ape, like you.”
“He’s lucky we don’t hang people on looks,” laughed Benson.
“He read your notes,” replied Jack, his voice soft.
The grin on Benson’s face struggled. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”
“When you had your back to him, he read your notes.”
The grin returned to Benson’s face. “That time I made the coffee?”
Jack nodded.
“Well, sorry to disappoint you, but that was deliberate—a little trap I hoped he’d fall for. But he didn’t. I kept him within my peripheral. He never moved once, smart arse.”
Jack sighed. “He didn’t need to. He read everything with his fingers.”
Benson burst out laughing. “His fingers? Sure it wasn’t his arse?” He laughed louder. “Jack, I think you need some rest. If I were you, I’d—”
“Tactile perception.”
Benson shrugged his shoulders. “Tactile …?”
“Tactile perception. Blind or semi-blind people have the ability. That’s how they read Braille. When the area of the skin is brought into contact with the line of Braille being read, it has a critical relation to the efficiency with which the tactile information is passed to their brain.”
“Bullshit. What makes you such an expert on this quack theory?”
“It’s not quackery; it’s a scientific fact. I know so much about it because my mother was legally blind. She could read better with her fingers than I could with my eyes.”
Benson looked slightly annoyed and indignant. “You never told me your mother was legally blind.”
“The trained and practised fingers of a blind or semi-blind reader skim the symmetrical patterns indented on the paper, transferring to his or her conscious mind words, thoughts, ideas and emotions. The cognitive processes involved in reading scribbled writing and Braille are essentially the same.”
“You’re beginning to sound like that bastard Shaw, with all those fancy phrases. I’m still not wholly convinced.”
“If you don’t believe me, run the tape,” challenged Jack.
“Okay. I will, smart arse.”
Jack watched as Benson set the apparatus up.
“I could have been an actor, you know,” said Benson, watching the screen flicker to life. “When I was younger, I almost went for it. Had the talent.”
“Not the looks, though,” said Jack, as he watched Benson on the screen turn towards the coffee machine. Benson was right, thought Jack: he was watching Jeremiah from his peripheral.
“Satisfied? Not a thing. Didn’t I tell you that?” insisted Benson.
With a flick of a button on the remote control, Jack froze the picture. “There. See it?” Jack pressed the button again, and the story continued.
Benson’s face almost clung to the screen. “I didn’t see a thing.”
Jack pressed the rewind button. Two seconds later, he pressed stop, then play.
“Watch his fingers. Nothing else,” instructed Jack.
The same scene passed before Benson’s eyes. “Fingers? I don’t see no fucking movement from his—” Benson blinked. “Hold on. Go back. Hit the replay button again.”
Jack pressed the button.
It was true. The fingers—or at least the knuckles had moved slightly. The rest of Jeremiah’s body hadn’t moved a fraction, as if he had become an ice sculpture.
“Hit it again,” said Benson, his voice softer, uncertain.
There it was. The movement, slightly eerie, like a ghost walking on a grave.
“Fuck!” Benson shuddered involuntarily. Taking the remote from Jack, he played the scene over and over again, mesmerised. “That is fucking creepy.”
“The greater the skin contact with the written line, the larger the tactile view,” explained Jack. “Plus it was nice and warm in the interrogation room. Cold fingers do not make for good reading.”
“Thanks for that belated information. Had I known old slippery tits was going to do a Liberace on me, I would have done the interrogation in the fucking fridge.”
“You didn’t mention about the material discovered at Harris’s home?”
“Of course not. I wanted to see if Grazier could add some interesting ingredients into that particular cake, without my mentioning it. The less he—and everyone else—knows about all this at the minute, the better. According to bank statements found in Harris’s bedroom, he withdrew a large amount of money from his bank account. Ten thousand. Probably his life savings—when he wasn’t donating it to like-minded people. I suppose he always moaned he didn’t have a bucket to piss in, a good sob story when asking for money—oh, I almost forgot: he was issued with a passport, just over two years ago, but we couldn’t locate it.”
“Everything is pointing to Harris fleeing the country.”
“What we have to figure out is: did he flee because of loan sharks or because he thought we were getting too close to him?” said Benson, removing a cigarette from a box along with a lighter, before offering one to Jack.
“Thanks.”
Rolling t
he wheel of the lighter, Benson got no response. “Damn flint must be dull—a bit like my head, at the moment.”
Searching in his pocket, Jack produced a box of matches.
“Do you think he knew?” inquired Benson, taking a light.
“About?”
“Harris’s lust for children. Surely, he must have suspected something, that not everything was kosher with his best friend?”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you think Grazier helped him to flee?” asked Benson.
“Flee?” replied Jack, squashing the cig on to the floor before opening the door to leave. “Time will tell if that is too generous a word to use.”
Chapter Thirty
“Still as he fled, his eye was backward cast As if his fear still followed him behind.”
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen
“YOU DID WELL. Stop judging yourself so harshly,” said Judith, standing by the window, watching Jeremiah’s and her own reflection in it. Rain was beginning to fall, melting against the glass.
“This afternoon was horrible in the police station. I kept having a feeling that someone else was watching me, someone a lot more dangerous than the big oafish beast.”
“Oh, someone was watching you. Make no mistake about that. Those mirrors aren’t put in for cosmetic reasons.”
“The big cop kept asking about Joe. This troubled me, but I was clever and remained cordial, never angry. I gave him no hint of my building fury, for that would have provided him with ammunition against me, made him suspect something.”
Rain was hitting harder against the window now, distorting Judith’s reflection. She could no longer see Jeremiah.
“You’ll be called back,” said Judith, matter-of-factly.
Jeremiah’s body jerked upwards, as if electricity had been connected to his seat, bolts of electricity tunnelling up his arse. “Back? But I told them everything—exactly what you told me to say. Surely they think Joe simply fled, got out of the country as quickly as possible? What else could they think?”
Alternatives, you idiot, she wanted to say. Lots for them to choose from.
Judith studied Jeremiah, his agitated movements. She wanted to hurt him, physically, but he had grown to enjoy hurt—almost as much as she enjoyed administering it. She would have to devise other, more subtle, ways to bring the pain.
“You’re not listening to me,” said Jeremiah, his damp skin reflecting like plastic. “You said we would be alone soon. When are we getting rid of him? We’ve had him for too long. It’s dangerous.”
“Come here,” she whispered.
Obediently, Jeremiah stood, before walking slowing towards her.
“Do I detect jealousy?” she teased. “A man jealous of a boy?”
“You promised we would be alone again, the way it used to be. Please … make him leave, go away forever into the darkness.”
Judith smiled. It made her lips swell obscenely, like fat skinless snails.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
Jeremiah nodded reluctantly, as if he didn’t trust the words lodging in his mouth, as if released they would turn him into a sobbing, mumbling wreck.
“The boy has told me that he loves me,” said Judith, her eyes turning the colour of spilt ink. She could feel Jeremiah’s entire body stiffen as she placed her hand against his chest, feeling the heart banging furiously against it, seeking freedom. It felt like a frantic bird, trapped in a bony cage.
Gently placing her nose against his skin, she inhaled, smelling his odour, his nervousness and insecurity mixing with a slight touch of post-interrogation fear. The smell was potent and intoxicating and she had to admit it was making her slightly dizzy—dizzy like the anticipation of heroin coursing through her body. But she was pursuing other smells trapped in the grease of Jeremiah’s skin: smells of coffee, cigarettes and cheap aftershave. She could picture the big cop, standing there full of intimidation, towering over Jeremiah like a skyscraper of muscle and sinew. But it was the other smell she was chasing, the smell from the other cop, no doubt obscured behind the two-way mirror, studying Jeremiah.
Closing her eyes, Judith allowed her flared nostrils to come close to Jeremiah’s skin, hovering lightly over the texture. She stopped, just above his left cheekbone, her heart jumping slightly. It was there, the smell of the other cop, the watcher. There were other smells as well: urine, dull excrement and cheap soap. Why was that?
“Did you ask to go to the toilet during the questioning?”
The unseemly question bothered Jeremiah. His body stiffened further.
“I … yes. I needed time to think. I didn’t relieve myself. I only wanted time to get a small break from the—”
“That was stupid—and dangerous. You should never have left the interrogation room. It gave the look of avoidance. Why do you always prefer weakness over strength?”
“What was wrong with—?”
“Sshhhhh,” she hissed, her eyes slightly glazed. The smell was bothering her. Above all the shit, piss and cheap soap, she could detect the watcher. Had he followed Jeremiah into the toilet, suspecting something? What was it? She had smelt it before, the watcher’s smell, but where? A distilled version, perhaps, but no doubt the same. Where? Where?
Angrily, she pushed Jeremiah away. “You’re useless. You couldn’t even carry their smells on your pathetic skin.”
“What have I done that you’re so angry? Didn’t I do all that you asked? What’s wrong? Help me to rectify it. Please. You know I’ll do anything for you.”
Swiftly regaining her composure, Judith whispered, “They are coming, coming after us. They will get here, eventually, like a gathering storm—make no mistake about that.”
“What?” said Jeremiah, the blood draining from his exhausted face. “No, no, you’re mistaken. I fooled them. I can fool them again.”
“Fooled yourself. Not them.”
“I … I will not allow harm to come to you,” replied Jeremiah, his voice unusually strong.
She gently touched his head, reassuringly, her lips deflating into thin sharp lines.
“I know you won’t.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“For doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.”
H.P. Lovecraft, Ex Oblivione
IT HAD BEEN a rough and long day for Benson, and he wasn’t looking forward to getting home. Anne would be waiting, asking had he found Adrian, making him feel as if he were somehow responsible for their godson’s disappearance. It was a no-win situation. The story of his life. After this afternoon’s less-than-successful interrogation of Grazier, he felt he had somehow let himself down in front of Jack, allowing the creepy barber to fool him.
Exhausted, he opened the door of his car, only to be confronted by a shadowy figure sitting in the driver’s seat.
“You bastard! You scared the shit out of me. What the hell are you doing, lurking in my car, in the middle of the fucking night?”
“Did you check out Grazier’s statement, the one he made to the investigating team?” asked Jack.
“Yes, I did—except he never made one, according to Starsky and fucking Hutch, two pimply-faced, just-off-the-tit, so-called detectives.”
“What?”
“They said they took hundreds of statement that week. They meant to go back to the shop because our good friend, Grazier, wasn’t there at the time, just pervy Harris.”
“They didn’t go back?” said Jack.
“Of course not. Starsky and fucking Hutch had more important things to do, like watching The Simpsons, the two wankers.” Benson sighed, sounding disgusted. “I tell you, Jack, the sooner I get out of this business, the better. All these new recruits do everything according to the book. The problem is that when the book doesn’t have an answer, they turn into fucking robots, unable to think for themselves.”
“So, Mister Grazer misled us?”
“Misled sounds too nice. The we
ird bastard lied through his stinking teeth. I’ll have to bring him back in again, and hit him with a few forget-me-nots, if you get my meaning,” relied Benson, punching the palm of his hand with his fist.
“Best to let him stew,” advised Jack. “He’s intelligent enough. I’m sure he knows it’s only a matter of time before we discover his lie. Hopefully, it’ll make him do something careless, something to our advantage.”
Benson smiled warily. “Why do I have a cringing feeling in my balls that you have an ulterior reason, other than Grazier, for hiding in my car in the dead of night?”
“Thought it best to ask you, face to face,” said Jack. “You probably would have hung up on me, had I phoned. I need a favour.”
Upon hearing those words, Benson groaned. “A favour? That usually means breaking the law, as far as you’re concerned. What is it this time? You want to break into the main computer at headquarters? Steal Wilson’s lunch? C’mon, enlighten me as to your next adventure.”
Despite his own weariness, Jack couldn’t resist a tired smile.
“I need you to let me into the old Graham building.”
Relief crept on to Benson’s face. “You hide in my car like an assassin, just to ask me for a grand tour of the Graham building? Strange—earlier today, Wilson released a memo stating that the investigation into the corpse found in the orphanage was now completed, and that no more man-hours were to be wasted on it.”
“That was a quick and thorough investigation,” said Jack, disgusted. “Another unsolved murder quickly cooked for the books, swept under the carpet.”
“Dead homeless people don’t vote, you understand?” Benson grinned. “Anyway, I don’t see a problem with letting you in for an hour or so. How does tomorrow morning, early, sound?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight? Like now, in the fucking dark? There’s no electricity in that place. Surely it can wait until the morning?”
Jack eased over to the passenger seat. “I’ve torches in the back of my car, two streets away.” He patted the driver’s seat. “Besides, sometimes the dark can be more revealing than the light.”
