The Society Of Dirty Hearts (A crime thriller novel)

by Ben Cheetham

  “Where the hell have you been?” Robert demanded to know.

  “Can we do this later?” Julian asked, stifling a yawn.

  “No we can’t. You’re supposed to be studying, not staying out night after night, partying or getting drunk or whatever. If this is how you’re going to behave, you might as well go back to London.”

  “Fuck that,” Julian muttered under his breath.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Sorry, I’m too tired for this right now.” Julian headed for his bedroom. He collapsed onto his bed and put in his I-pod earphones, turning the music up loud enough that it’d wake him if he happened to drift off. He thought about what Weasel had said. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. There was that feeling again. In his stomach. Spreading to his other internal organs, insidious as cancer. It made him queasy and angry. He took off his earphones, dug his mobile-phone and a business-card out of his pockets. He punched in the number on the card and Tom Benson answered in a crisp, professional tone.

  “There’s this guy you might want to talk to,” Julian told him. “His nickname’s Weasel.”

  “I think I know who you mean. Crucifix tattoo on his left hand.”

  “That’s him.” Then, cringing, Julian repeated what Weasel had said.

  “Well, well, I’ll have to have a chat with Weasel. Thanks for that. But how do you know him?”

  Julian told the policeman about Mia Bradshaw. Not everything. Just the bits he needed to hear. When he was finished, the policeman said, “Now I’ve got something to tell you. I just got off the phone with the coroner. Joanne Butcher died from a heroin overdose.”

  The words, all those fuckers can tut and nod and shake their little heads, rang in Julian’s brain. “So she wasn’t murdered?”

  “Doesn’t look like it. So there’s no need for you to hang around.” A cautionary note entered the policeman’s voice. “Oh, and if I were you I’d have nothing else to do with Mia Bradshaw. You’re likely to get into trouble hanging around with that kind.”

  Irritation prickled through Julian. What do you mean by that kind? So she comes from a bad background. That doesn’t mean she’s bad, just unlucky. He felt like saying this, but didn’t. He simply said, “Thanks,” and hung-up.

  Julian hurried from his bedroom. He had to see Mia, tell her about Joanne Butcher, tell her he was sorry, make her realise he was different from all the tut-tut-tutters and head-shakers – and he knew there was only one way to do that. He had to show her who he really was. Show her his sickness was greater than anything she carried. Then, maybe, she’d show him who she really was. He’d already caught a glimpse of her real self, her vulnerability. It made him fear for her, fear that she might destroy herself if her hatred of life grew any deeper. He didn’t know why he should care what happened to her, but he did.

  “Where are you going now?” asked Robert. When he got no reply, voice rising, he continued, “I asked you a question. Don’t you walk away-”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Robert, leave him be,” interrupted Christine.

  “No I won’t leave him be. While he’s under my roof-” Julian heard his dad say. Then he was out the front door and running for his car.

  Mia wasn’t in the fast-food restaurant. After cruising around for a while, vainly scanning the streets for her, Julian remembered that he knew which school she went to. It was the same school his dad had attended. Not the best school in town, but as his dad had once said, a decent school, with decent people. At lunchtime, kids streamed out the gate – kids with middle-class written all over them. Mia was amongst them, but somehow aloof from them. As Julian approached her, he noticed other kids giving her looks, some hating, some mocking, some perhaps envying or even admiring. She didn’t appear to notice or care.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. Mia walked past him without looking at him. “Please,” he continued, “this is really important.”

  She stopped and turned to run her eyes over his drawn, unshaven face. “Come on,” she said, almost expressionless, and continued walking.

  Julian followed. “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere we can talk.”

  They walked along quiet suburban streets to a house – a well-kept semi with a garden and a privet hedge. “Is this your parents’ place?” Julian asked, surprised. He’d pictured her living in a flat on some run-down estate.

  “Foster-parents’.”

  At the front door, they met a girl about Mia’s age coming the other way. “Who’s he?” she asked, looking at Julian.

  “None of your business.”

  “You’re not supposed to have boys in the house when my parents are out,” the girl called after them as they made their way upstairs, putting special emphasis on the word ‘my’.

  Ignoring her, Mia led Julian into a bedroom. It contained all the essentials – bed, desk, drawers, wardrobe – but there were no posters, books, cds, or any of the other things you might expect to see in a teenage girl’s room. There was a suitcase on the floor, open but unpacked, screwed up clothes leaking out of it, makeup, bits of cheap jewellery and photos jumbled in amongst them. Stretching out onto the bed, Mia looked at Julian expectantly.

  Julian took a breath and told her how her best-friend died. He saw, perhaps, the faintest quiver in her eyes. But other than that, nothing. “Is that it?” she said. “Is that all you have to tell me?”

  Before the previous night, Julian might’ve been tempted to call Mia a total fucking cold-hearted bitch. But now he knew – or at least, thought he knew – that her impassivity was a mask she’d learned to wear to protect herself. He shook his head, gesturing to the bed. “Can I sit?”

  Mia shrugged. “Sure.”

  He flopped down next to her, rubbing his eyes and murmuring, “Man, I’m so tired. I haven’t slept properly in a week.”

  “Why?”

  “I have these dreams.” Julian swallowed as he spoke, forming the words with a reluctant mumble.

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “Bad ones. It’s like there’s something in the bedroom with me, attacking me, trying to get inside me.”

  Mia sat up, crossing her legs, curiosity replacing her impassivity. “You mean like a ghost or something?”

  “No, not a ghost.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So what happens?”

  Julian told Mia what happened in the dream – the original dream, not the new version. She listened intently, fascinated. “That’s seriously creepy shit,” she said. “So how long have you been dreaming that stuff?”

  “Since I was ten.”

  “Fuck.” Mia looked at Julian with something close to sympathy. “I’d go totally out of my skull if I was you.”

  “I almost did. You wouldn’t believe how many therapists I’ve been through.”

  “Did they help?”

  “Some of them did. The last guy I saw told me I needed to learn to accept the dream, not fight it. He said I had to let it come, in order to let it go. So I did, and it did go for a while.”

  “But now it’s back.”

  Julian nodded. “Ever since I heard about Joanne Butcher.”

  Mia frowned, her eyes searching Julian’s. “Why would that make it come back?”

  “Maybe because her disappearance reminded me of Susan Carter.”

  “Who’s Susan Carter?”

  “A girl from around here who went missing ten years ago. My grandma tried to help her parents find her.”

  “Was she a copper?”

  Julian smiled thinly at the idea. “No, she was a psychic medium.”

  Mia’s eyebrows lifted. “You mean she could, like, speak to the dead.”

  “Supposedly, although if you ask me it was a load of bollocks, one big act.”

  “I dunno, I kind of believe in that stuff.” For the space of a breath Mia’s eyes went away again, lost in whatever she saw on the horizon of her mind. She blinked back to the real world. “
So go on, what happened with your nan?”

  Julian told Mia about the day his mum took him to visit his grandma, about creeping downstairs to the séance, about his grandma’s changed, distorted face. She shook her head, wide-eyed. “This just gets weirder and weirder. So how did you find out who Susan was?”

  “I went to this therapist a few years later, and he reckoned that unravelling the mysteries of the dream would take away its power. So Mum took me to the library and showed me newspaper clippings about a girl called Susan Carter who went over to a friend’s house one evening, but never got there. A big search went on for her, but they didn’t find anything. It was as if she’d vanished right off the face of the planet. Anyway, about a year later the police arrested this truck-driver who tried to snatch a girl off the street in Glasgow. His name was Michael Ridgway. This guy was a loner, a real oddball. When they searched his house they found a box with bits of jewellery and girl’s clothes and underwear in it. Turned out, they belonged to other girls he’d snatched.”

  “I’ve heard about that kind of thing – about how serial killers keep trophies from their victims. I remember seeing on TV about this guy who killed people by biting their throats, and drinking their blood, like some kind of vampire. He kept their heads as trophies.”

  “Yeah, well this sicko had been trucking up and down the country for years, abducting and killing girls. That’s why they called him The A1 Murderer. When the police found out he’d been on a job in this area the day Susan Carter disappeared, they showed his trophies, or whatever they were, to her parents. There was a necklace the same as one she’d been wearing when she disappeared. It was obvious he’d taken her. Problem was he wouldn’t admit it. And since no one had seen anything, and they couldn’t find Susan’s body, and you could buy the same necklace on any high-street, they decided not to charge him with her murder. But they did charge him with six other murders and locked him up for life.”

  “They should’ve cut his balls off n’all.”

  “Maybe, but it wouldn’t have made much difference. The guy was only in jail a few months before he died of a heart-attack. That’s when Susan Carter’s parents went to my grandma.”

  “And did your grandma find out where she was?”

  “Course not,” Julian said, with a derisive little laugh.

  “So the man in your dream is Michael Ridgway.”

  “No. I haven’t got a clue who the man in my dream is, or if it’s even a man.” Heaving a sigh, Julian closed his eyes. “Whatever it is, I just want it to leave me the fuck alone.”

  Something touched his cheek. It was Mia. Her fingers moved along his jaw towards his chin. She was smiling – not a come on smile, a concerned smile. He flinched away. “There’s something else.” His voice came heavily, as if dragged through deep mud. “You might not feel so sorry for me, you might not even want to know me once I tell you.”

  “Who says I want to know you now?” teased Mia.

  “I’m serious.”

  “If you think you can shock me, go ahead. But I’m telling you, it’ll need to be totally fucking out there to shock me.”

  Julian cleared his throat, swallowed. As he opened his mouth, there came a sudden dropping sensation, like falling off a high place, and Mia’s face briefly swam out of focus. “When the dream came back, it was...was…” He stammered into silence. Part of him was desperate to keep quiet, but another part of him needed to go on. “It was different. This time I’m not the one being attacked, I’m the attacker. I rape and strangle Susan Carter, and it feels…it feels good. It’s the most powerful feeling I’ve ever had.”

  Mia puffed her cheeks. “That’s pretty fucking out there.”

  “You think I’m sick, right?” Julian looked shamefacedly from under his eyebrows. “You think I’m a pervert, like Michael Ridgway.”

  “I don’t know what you are, but I’m pretty sure you’re nothing like him. I’m guessing you’re just fucked up, like the rest of us.”

  Julian almost smiled, despite the way he felt. “Thanks.”

  “What I’m saying is we’ve all got our own dirty little secrets.”

  “Not all of us have recurring dreams about rape and murder, though.”

  “Yeah, but it’s only a dream, right? I mean, just because you dream it doesn’t mean you actually want to go out and do it. Does it?”

  “Fuck no,” exclaimed Julian. “No fucking way. It makes me want to puke just thinking about it.”

  “Well then, there you go.” Mia hesitated, then went on slowly, reluctantly, as if she was saying more than she wanted to, “Look, Julian, I’ve come across some bad people in my time. I’m not talking about pricks like Weasel, either. I’m talking the kind of people you never, ever want to meet. And you can take it from me, you’re not a bad or evil person. You don’t even come close. You’re just an ordinary screwed up kid.”

  What bad people? Julian wanted to ask, but he knew Mia well enough by now to know he wouldn’t get an answer. He drew some relief from her reaction to his confession, but still the thought kept nagging at him, you’re not normal, there’s something twisted and rotten inside you. There has to be.

  They sat in silence a while, not looking at each other. “Hey,” Mia piped up, her dark blue eyes shining with some kind of inner excitement. “What if you’re the same as your nan?”

  Julian frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what if you’ve got the same power she had. What if that’s why you keep having these dreams. Susan Carter could be trying to contact you to tell you who killed her.”

  The idea had never crossed Julian’s mind for an instant. He tried to dismiss it with a snort, but there was a kind of perverse logic to what Mia said that made it cling to him like a cold limpet. “My grandma was a fake.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Mediums are all fakes. There’s nothing beyond this world. No ghosts, no angels, no Heaven, no God.”

  “You can’t know that,” retorted Mia, suddenly tetchy.

  “You’re right,” said Julian, surprised – he hadn’t expected her to be the type to buy into all that. “But it’s what I believe.”

  “Well I think there is something else out there.” Mia challenged Julian with her eyes to argue otherwise.

  He shrugged. “Whatever gets you through the night.”

  Mia looked down at her lap, fidgeting with her hands. She glanced at Julian from beneath her fringe with uncharacteristic sheepishness. “Maybe we could try an experiment to see who’s right.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of experiment?”

  “We could do a séance, see if we can contact Susan Carter.”

  Julian stared open-mouthed at Mia, unable to reply. Her words were like a hand reaching out to grab his throat. For a second, he wondered if he’d got her wrong, maybe she really was just a cold-hearted bitch. But then he glimpsed something in her expression, some hint of angst or even fear that seemed to suggest this wasn’t simply about Susan Carter. Right then, though, he was too thrown to give any thought to what else it could be about.

  “Sorry,” said Mia. “It was a stupid idea.”

  “Yeah, you got that right.”

  “Can we just forget I said it?”

  Julian sighed. “Sure. It’s forgotten.”

  They sat in silence a while. The room was warm with the midday sun shining through the window, and the bed was soft. Julian yawned. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Mia suggested.

  Julian’s throat cinched up tight again. “Don’t you have to get back to school?”

  “I’ll skip class. It’s only sports this afternoon anyway.”

  “What if I have the dream?”

  “So what if you do? You’re worried what I might see, right? But you don’t need to be.”

  “It’s not just that. I know this sounds crazy, but what if…What if I attack you in my sleep?”

  Mia laughed. “If only I was so lucky.”

  “I’m serious. I might hurt you.” />
  “I doubt that, but if it makes you feel better I could tie your hands.” Mia stooped to pick a fishnet stocking off the carpet. She grinned, flashing her eyebrows at Julian. “Kinky, eh?”

  Face creased in uncertainty, Julian put a hand to the dull, sleepless ache in his head. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

  “Chill, it’ll be fine. Listen, you looked after me when I freaked out, so now I’ll do the same for you.”

  Reluctantly, Julian allowed Mia to tie his hands. “Make sure it’s tight.”

  “There. You’ll never get out of that.”

  Julian wriggled his hands. Mia was right, he couldn’t work them free. “Now you’re mine to do what I want with,” she teased, taking hold of his shoulders and drawing him down onto the pillows. He took a deep breath. “Close your eyes,” she said. He did so. He felt her hand on his head, felt her fingers pushing through his hair. His body stiffened with apprehension as a slight numbness drifted over him, a hint of sleep. He heard her shush him. Then he heard nothing more, felt nothing more and saw nothing more.

  He awoke refreshed, exhilarated. His sleep had been like falling into an oblivion absolved of dreams. Mia was gone. Late afternoon shadows played across the curtains. Rolling to glance at the bedside clock, he felt something hard beneath the pillows. He reached under and pulled out a little black book, Mia’s diary. He stared hesitantly at it. Aware of how much he valued his own privacy, the thought of prying into someone else’s secret place made him deeply uneasy. And yet, surely it was justified if he found something he could use to snatch Mia back from the edge he sensed she was swaying on. Ears tuned for the slightest sound of movement on the landing, he opened the book. A photo fell out, dog-eared from being handled, faded with age or exposure to sunlight. It was a school photo of a smiling girl of about fourteen or fifteen. Her mousey blonde hair was tied in a sleek ponytail. Her makeupless face was lightly freckled, her features strikingly similar to Mia’s. She had the same eyes, the same nose, but her mouth was fuller and the curve of her jaw was softer. She and Mia could’ve been sisters, or maybe mother and daughter. Julian’s gaze lingered on the photo as long as he dared, before moving to the pages it’d marked, which dated to the previous day. At the top of the page was written ‘How much is enough?’ and underneath it there was an incredibly lifelike sketch of a face. The face was jowly and thick-featured with a snoutish nose. The eyebrows formed a single line above small, close-set eyes. Swollen-looking lips curved up into a smile, which seemed to exude a kind of repulsive leering cynicism. Next to it was written ‘Mr Ugly’.