The Polka Dot Girl

by Darragh McManus

  At times like this I wish I had a cat, warm and soft and pliant, nice to cuddle. Then I realize I can’t even keep a houseplant alive for more than a week. Poor little critter wouldn’t stand a chance. But I still wished I had a cat.

  The phone’s ring-tone seemed so loud in the virtually total silence of my apartment that I leaped in my skin a little. I stood and went towards it but it stopped ringing before I got there. Then I noticed the blinking red light next to the handset: that had been an automated alert, telling me I had a message. I dialed into my mailbox and heard: “Uh…yeah. Uh, hi. Hello. This is, uh, Bethany Gilbert calling for that detective, Auf der Maur. Got your number from the cops. Uh, I mean from your colleagues. Yeah, could you, like, call me tonight? Not here. Not at the college. In a bar. The number is zero-four-four-four, 11-18, one- two-one. I’m gonna be there ’till about half-past 11. Yeah, so please call me there, Detective. I need to, uh… It’s about Madeleine. I gotta go.”

  Beep. End of message. What time had she said? Half-past 11. I glanced at the clock: 11.20. I replayed the message to get the number, dialed the joint and the barkeep called Gilbert back just as she was walking out the door. I said, “Bethany. This is Detective Auf der Maur. You wanted to talk to me.” “Yeah, hi. You took your time calling.”

  I corralled my temper. “I’m calling now, Bethany. We can talk now.”

  “Yeah, okay. Alright.”

  “Can you speak freely? Where you are?”

  “Uh-huh. There’s nobody here but me. Hey, Jenny. Give us a few minutes, would you? Thanks, babe.” A long pause. “Okay, she’s gone. Jenny’s cool but this is seriously fucking private business, you know?”

  “Sure. So…whenever you’re ready.”

  Gilbert blew out heavily. I could picture her chubby face, her childish pout, that vaguely ludicrous look of cross-eyed concentration. She blew out again. I waited.

  Then she said, “I’m telling you this because I want to help Madeleine. I want you to catch her killer. I know you think I didn’t care about her, you think I’m shit and I just used Madeleine for money. But that’s not true. I liked her, okay we may not have been best buddies, but shit. She’s dead now and that sucks. I didn’t want Madeleine to die. I just… She was alright. But now she’s dead.”

  “Are you saying you blame yourself, Bethany?”

  “Yeah. I mean no. Why would I blame myself? Stop putting words into my mouth or I’ll hang the fuck up right now.”

  I said softly, “Okay. That’s okay. Just go on.”

  Another long pause. “I can’t say much. Alright? All I can tell you is you’re on the right track. Yeah. Just, like, keep looking where you’re looking. …Listen, Madeleine was involved in some creepy shit, alright? I don’t know all the details.”

  I chanced raising the pressure: “I think you know some of them, Bethany. I think you want to tell me about it.”

  “Hey, it’s my ass on the line here, got it? Not yours, mine.” She sighed heavily once more. “I’m, uh, I’m a bit scared. I’m not scared, I’m just kinda fucking nervous, you know? There’s a lot of… She got dragged into something bad. I don’t mean the usual shit, the drinking and all that crap. Who cares about that? This was—bad, okay? This was big. A bunch of weirdoes, they meet up and have ceremonies and all kinds of crazy shit. Madeleine told me some stuff about it. Worshipping the high priestess, uh, the goddess, what did she say? The moon goddess, or the sun, or some fucking thing. I don’t know, I couldn’t understand it. They sucked her into their fucking spider ’s web and she couldn’t get out.”

  She stopped talking. I held my breath, silently running a name through my head: That Island. The suburban club tagged by Misery’s PIs. The spooky place Camilla had warned me about. Then Gilbert spoke it aloud: “That Island. It’s a club. Check it out. Not a club like a nightclub, it’s a private joint. That’s where… Check that place out, Detective. You’ll find some answers there.”

  “You’ve been there. With Madeleine.”

  “Wha-? I… No, I’ve never seen that place. I don’t know what…”

  “You have, Bethany. You’ve been there. You almost let it slip when I first spoke to you. It’s alright. I can protect you. Just tell me the truth.”

  “Hey fuck you, okay, Auf der Maur?! You can’t protect me. Nobody can protect nobody. …I’ve said too much, I’m gonna hang up now.”

  I said urgently, “No! Don’t. Bethany, listen to me very carefully. You want to tell me. You feel bad about Madeleine and you want to help me. So help me.”

  “No, I… Look, the address is 44 Rue de Claudel, in Shrewsbury. You know, that posh area north of the canal? They’re so pretentious. With their French names for streets. Yeah, sure you know it, you’re a cop. You guys know everything.”

  I scribbled the address on the back of an unpaid electricity bill. Gilbert continued, “Alright, that’s all I can say. Check out that place, Detective. Big mansion, huge place. Big beautiful gardens, all that. And don’t tell them I mentioned it. I’ll deny it. I’ll lie my fucking ass off if I have to.”

  “Okay. Your secret’s safe with me. Just, meet me. Five minutes, anywhere you like. Please, Bethany. It’s important.”

  “No, no. Oh shit. I can’t, okay? No. I just can’t. It’s not worth…”

  “For Madeleine. If not for me or the police or the justice system, forget about all that civic duty stuff. Just think of Madeleine. Meet me, tonight. You name the time and place and I’ll be there.”

  “I don’t want to get involved.”

  “You won’t be. This is just you and me. Give me a time and place.”

  More silence. I debated whether or not to reach for a cigarette. Then I felt it: a change in the atmosphere, a loosening, a drop in pressure. I don’t know how I knew but I knew—she’d come around.

  Gilbert said quietly, “Half an hour from now, on campus. Exactly half an hour. That’s midnight. I gotta go back to the college now. Meet me… There’s a secluded area, lot of trees and shit, about 50 yards inside the main gate, off to the right. Do you know the LaVey Institute?”

  “I know it. I’ll find it.”

  “There. I’ll be hiding—I mean waiting in there. Exactly at 12, got it?”

  “I got it. Thanks, Bethany. You’re doing the right thing.”

  She sounded deflated, defeated. She grunted, “Right. Sure. I gotta go” and hung up the phone. I did likewise, grabbed my car keys and gunned it for the door.

  You know that mildly queasy feeling you get in your insides from déjà vu? It’s like you know something is ever-so-slightly off, not quite as it should be, but because your brain can’t actually pinpoint what that is, your guts react instead. Your body is giving you a message: something’s wrong. I hardly ever experience déjà vu but I get that feeling on the job sometimes, as a kind of forewarning. When I’m entering a building, say, and the person I’m expecting to be there isn’t breathing anymore, and the person who stopped them breathing is now waiting for me, behind a door, with an expression of unhinged bloodlust and a fire-fighter ’s axe held above their head… My stomach sometimes starts to wobble and roll. Something is wrong.

  I knew as soon as I got out of my car that the girl was dead. It was like the stench of it was floating across to me, carried on the night breeze like invisible demons, whispers of the baddest of bad news. My viscera did a somersault and I knew, and then I really did feel sick, properly sick. I shuddered and breathed deeply until I was sure I wouldn’t vomit, fitted the standard- issue torch into the belt loop at my back, unholstered my gun, gripped it in both hands and padded quietly towards the small copse which lay in a hollow some 30 yards away. When I was right on the edge of it I pulled the torch and swung the strong beam of light across the tree-line: if the killer was still there, better she be blinded than I go in blind. Nothing. Nobody. Just some thin, anemic-looking trees, like frozen ghosts in the glare of the torch, wasted, almost ephemeral. As if they only came into being by the magic of my light shining on them. I clicked off
the torch and listened. No sound except the wind creaking branches, a far-distant hum of traffic. The area was empty, hushed, devoid of human life. I turned the light back on and moved forward.

  Bethany Gilbert lay on her back about 30 yards in; far enough to virtually guarantee that nobody would hear her die. And it had been an awful death: her head was twisted in a grotesque position, eyes open in horror, a parody of anatomy. Arms and hands pulled up and in like they were attached to a puppeteer ’s strings. Leaves and dirt were scattered and disturbed all around her; evidence, if more were needed, of a violent struggle and a violent end. I crouched beside her and shone the light down her body. The first sweep told me I didn’t need to bother with the torso—all the damage was done to her head and face. Blood poured from tiny wounds, dozens of them, from chin to forehead, across the skull, one or two on the neck. Dark, horrible blood, still leaking away, still warm, wisps of steam rising from it in the cold air. What the hell kind of weapon could have made wounds like these? A stiletto blade, a small screwdriver? Not a nail-gun, there were no nails in her or on the ground.

  I walked back to the car and called it in. No point running around after a perp I knew had fled by now. All I could do was hold my ground, preserve the scene. Dispatch briskly informed me that a crime scene unit and ambulance were on the way; I smiled sourly and thought a hearse would have been more useful. This case had moved from one death to more than one; we now had what is informally referred to as a body-count. Two girls, two murders. And I couldn’t help feeling, as I waited for the sirens to swing towards where I stood, that I was partly to blame for one of those.

  Chapter 18

  Orianne

  WHAT was I saying about déjà vu? One more time with feeling: I needed a cigarette and a strong coffee. No coffee machine so I had just the cigarette. One of those nights that hang around too long. Too many recently. Reminding myself again: this is the job, shut up and do it. Except this time I bitterly replied: Oh, go screw yourself, Genie.

  Déjà vu: it was like the Madeleine crime scene all over again. Gone past one o’clock in the morning. A dead girl of about 20. Forensics doing what they do. Cop snappers taking pictures of the wooded area, the grotesque corpse, the scattered leaves. Uniforms standing guard on a cordon, keeping rubberneckers and shocked students back. All that was missing was Farrington—delayed by some minor personal crisis, but on her way—and a drunken hooker staring past the dreadful present towards her own dreadful past. Amazingly, Officers Mulqueen and Browne were present as well. They stood just inside the main gates of the LaVey campus, hands lightly touching their batons. The grim-faced Mulqueen was even hopping on her toes again to warm them. She must feel the cold really badly. I thought, She should put on some weight.

  I went over to them and smiled wryly. “We really have to stop meeting under these circumstances. Officer Browne, Officer Mulqueen. How are you?”

  Jerry Browne stifled a giggle and said, “Fine, Detective Auf der Maur. Great.” Mulqueen nodded and didn’t come close to an approximation of a smile. That girl was as serious as death. But she didn’t realize that I was, too. I joked because I was so fucking serious about all of this, I was afraid my head would break apart with the weight of it. I lit a cigarette and offered them the pack. They refused, as per proper procedure—I wouldn’t have cared if they wanted a smoke, but brass said that rookies must show dicks “due respect and deference while in the course of carrying out their duties.” Something like that. Some bureaucratic junk.

  I nodded and began walking away, saying, “Alright. Stay on your toes, girls.”

  Things had moved quickly by that stage. As soon as the cavalry arrived, at about quarter-past midnight, I gave them their orders—sit tight, wait for the techies, no civilian comes on- or goes off-campus—and stomped towards Azura LaVey’s office. I knew she’d be there, even at this late hour. And not just because of my suspicions about her: the woman came across like the sort of devoted egomaniac whose identity is so inextricably bound up in her work that work forms a large part of her day. And night. LaVey was the Institute and the Institute was her—that’s probably how she’d have phrased it, in that particular blend of aspirational waffle and aggressive New Ageism.

  She was there, but this time not alone. Her right-hand woman Orianne Queneau stood glaring at LaVey as I opened the door without asking for permission or clearing my throat. Her arm was raised as if she was making a point in a heated debate…either that or she was about to strike down LaVey. Chance would be a fine thing, et cetera. LaVey smirked and dragged slowly on a thin, black cigarette in a gold-plated holder. She looked less regal now, more like a spiteful brat. Queneau was a handsome woman, with good posture and sparkling light-blue eyes; she reminded me of an actress, Charlotte somebody, another woman who’d maintained her good looks past 50. She was saying something and hadn’t heard me; I stood inside the door and let her say it: “…purity of our intentions. Do you hear me, Azura? You’re forgetting that. And I will not have our—my— work, my life’s devoted effort, reduced to something as grubby, as venal, as, as…”

  “As…money? Power? Stop me if I’m getting close.” I smiled as they looked at me, open-mouthed, shocked, then glanced at each other, an infinitesimal moment of communication. Like two little girls swearing each other to secrecy over that prank they’d pulled. Queneau lowered her hand and pulled at her blouse, straightening it, anything to distract from the awkwardness of the present. She looked flustered, sweatily uncomfortable, but was doing a decent job at hiding it. LaVey didn’t look flustered at all, and returned to her smirking and smoking, her back almost to me. She was a cool one, alright.

  “Detective Auf der Maur, wasn’t it?” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  I stepped into the room and said, “Grubby and venal. You? Surely not, Madam LaVey.”

  “Do you usually eavesdrop on conversations? Is that normal procedure for the Hera City Police Department?”

  She spat out the last four words like they were all four-letter ones. I said, “Just yours. You fascinate me.”

  She whirled around to face me. Faux-naïve tone of voice, those amber-brown eyes open wide like a startled child. “I? A mere pedagogue, a teacher? What could possibly be fascinating to you about me?”

  “The fact that two of your students have been brutally murdered within the past week. That’s fascinating to me, for starters. You don’t mind if I join you in a smoke, do you?”

  I lit a Dark Nine and studied their reactions. Queneau actually blanched, her skin blotching in angry red and ghastly white. She put a hand to her throat and gasped, while staring at LaVey, “Two? Who? Who is it this time?”

  I said nothing. I watched LaVey: she hadn’t reacted at all. The smirk had returned, that fucking smirk I wanted to punch into the back of her head. She casually took a final drag on her cigarette and mashed it into a gravel-filled pot plant near her hand—another of those freaky-weird plants that were artfully placed around the office.

  Still no reply. She was taunting me, I realized, playing with me, the languorous cat and her little prey. Finally LaVey lost the smirk and spoke, and God, the insincerity was palpable: “Oh my word. Another murder? No. Detective, tell us.”

  I smirked myself, oozing contempt, and she caught it but held onto her composure. I got the impression that faking sentiment came as naturally to her as breathing.

  “Bethany Gilbert,” I said. “Beaten to death not half an hour ago. On your campus, Ms LaVey. Fascinating isn’t the word for it.”

  Queneau looked fit to pass out. She lowered herself unsteadily into a chair and swallowed heavily. She began what I presumed were learned breathing exercises, a way to control stress and anxiety: drawn in through flared nostrils, held, eased out through pursed lips. LaVey did no such thing. She placed a bejeweled finger to her lips, feigning concentration and concern. “Bethany. My God,” she said softly. “I only… She was in this office just this morning. And now… Oh, what a dreadful thing to have happened.”


  I said drily, “I can feel your pain. What was Gilbert doing here today? What did you talk about?”

  “Oh…nothing. That is to say, nothing important. Just college matters, some little problems she was having with her courses. I encourage all my girls to come directly to me if they have a problem, Detective.”

  “Did Bethany have a big problem?”

  “No. As I said, it was nothing. Nothing that couldn’t be ironed out. But now, alas…”

  Jesus Christ. I half-expected her to flutter her hand across her brow, make a deep bow and exeunt the stage. As an actor LaVey wasn’t bad, but it leaned more towards artifice than realism.

  She said, “Have you caught the person responsible? Have you caught that monstrous woman?”

  “You sound like you know her.”

  “I’ll ask you once to withdraw that question, Detective whoever-you-are. Or face charges of slander.”

  I turned to Queneau, who obviously had regained her balance, her composure and her confidence. She came and stood by LaVey’s side with the stance of a personal bodyguard. Then she said it again: “I insist that you withdraw that question or face the consequences.”

  What the fuck? Talk about a shift in gears. A minute ago she was virtually reaching for the smelling salts, now she’s fronting up to a homicide detective who quite clearly thinks her pal is rotten.

  I got on the front foot myself, got up in her face: “Excuse me? Who are you, exactly? Her lawyer?”

  “A friend and colleague. And witness to that slanderous remark.”

  LaVey smirked once more, up at her protector and back at me, raising her eyebrows as if to ask, Well? Whatcha gonna do now, hot-shot?

  I took another step closer and said angrily, “I withdraw nothing. Report me if you want, I don’t care. I don’t give a shit about anything except that dead girl lying in dirt and leaves and her own blood out there.”