by Mark Roberts
‘How?’
‘By giving me the mobile phone.’
‘What mobile phone?’
‘The one you took from your teacher, the one you took from Mrs Harry’s bag on Friday.’
‘Mum?’ He buried himself face first in his mother’s body and started to sob. ‘I don’t know what she means, Mum. I haven’t robbed anything ever.’
Clay glanced down the stairs. Hendricks was moving closer to the door of the front room, as the teenagers protested.
‘I was in all night last night...’
‘Wha’? Wha’? Wha’ you saying?’
‘Me ma’ll tell yah.’
‘I was in, OK, in!’
‘Sit down!’ barked Riley. ‘Don’t even think about intimidating me with your low-rent gangsta moves.’
Clay looked around Jon Pearson’s bedroom. Liverpool FC bedspread. Clothes on the floor, including a Liverpool football shirt, three seasons out of date. Toys and junk from Poundland littering most of the surfaces. A battered Nintendo DS. The private space of a poor child whose sobbing was growing louder by the minute.
She walked into the stale air of Jon’s bedroom. The wind pressed down noisily on the roof above her head. Her eye was taken by the navy blue V-necked jumper on the back of the only chair in the room. It had the St Bernard’s RC Primary School logo stitched in gold on the breast. His tie lay over his jumper and his grey trousers on the seat of the chair. From the blue of his jumper, her eye chased each piece of the room.
‘Do you have a book bag, Jon?’
He nodded.
‘Where is it?’
He shook his head.
‘Did he bring his book bag home on Friday, Mrs Pearson?’
‘Mrs Harry’s a... She insists. He’s scared of her. He’s scared of everything.’
Clay walked out of the room and, standing in the narrow space of the upstairs landing, listened to the muted voices of Riley and Hendricks bombarding Robbie and Vincent Pearson with their loaded questions.
She heard the cistern behind the bathroom door to her left and focused on the other two doors. There was a smell of sour musk and cheese coming from the bedroom door nearest to her. Robbie and Vincent’s boudoir.
Clay opened the door and turned on the light.
It looked like it had been ransacked by wolves. The walls were full, floor to ceiling, of pictures of half-naked models.
‘I never go in there,’ said Mrs Pearson. ‘It’s too depressing for words.’
Clay drifted deeper into the chaos, her eyes searching for the same shade of blue as Jon’s school jumper. A corner of blue poked out from a tangle of twisted clothes left on the floor. She stooped.
A soft vinyl surface.
It was Jon’s reading-book bag, his name inked on the pale blue name box. Clay picked it up.
‘Jon, come here!’
She heard his tears as he approached. She faced him. ‘Look at me, Jon. Did you have this with you in school on Friday? Jon?’ She raised her voice. ‘Did you have this bag in school with you on Friday?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you brought it home, right, when school closed early?’
‘Yeah.’
She focused on his mum. ‘You picked him up from school on Friday, Mrs Pearson?’
‘No, it were Vinnie. Broadgreen International School was already closed, see. Vinnie’s a good lad really...’
Clay tore back the Velcro strips that sealed the flap to the bag.
‘Don’t!’ said Jon, agitated. ‘It’s mine.’
Clay looked at Mrs Pearson and glanced inside.
‘It’s private!’ His voice rose to a scream and he struggled against his mother, who held him back.
‘Hendricks! Come up!’ called Clay.
His feet were light as he ran up the stairs two at a time.
Clay edged past Mrs Pearson. Jon pleaded, ‘On Dad’s grave, I never stole a thing!’
Clay took Hendricks to one side and opened the book bag.
In a heap of scrap paper and against a slim reading book, there was a black mobile phone.
The whole house was quiet. The only sound was the traffic blown in on the north wind from Childwall Valley Road.
‘Jon,’ said Clay. ‘You must tell the truth to—’
‘Don’t even think about it!’ shouted Riley downstairs.
There was a dull thud from the front room and Jon’s brothers screamed incoherently, their feet pounding.
The two boys spilled into the hall and raced towards the front door, Vincent wielding a baseball bat. They sprinted out of the house as Riley staggered from the front room. Hendricks was down the stairs in seconds, followed by Clay.
Riley propped herself up against the wall, unsure whether she was going to throw up or faint. A lump rose on her forehead and her eyes dithered.
Hendricks was out of the front door.
Clay held Riley by her armpits as she slid down to the floor.
‘Little bastard... my bag... car keys...’
Her eyes rolled and the lights went out inside her head.
Upstairs, Mrs Pearson’s screaming did nothing to cover the sound of Riley’s car engine roaring away from the house.
As Clay called for back-up, she shouted, ‘Get dressed, Jon Pearson. Now! You’re coming with me. And Mrs Pearson, I want a list of names and contact details of all your sons’ associates and friends.’
‘But I don’t know half the people they hang out with.’
‘Just get me a list before the ambulance gets here or I’ll do you for perverting the course of justice!’
42
6.59 pm
At one minute to seven, Daniel Tanner put his key in the lock of the door to his home in Ullet Road.
‘Regular as clockwork,’ muttered Nurse Beaton, putting on her coat in the hall. Overtime, at time and a half, began at one minute past seven and Mr Tanner had only been late twice in two years.
A tall, rotund man with a pot belly and sloping shoulders, Daniel Tanner caught his reflection in the hall mirror and lingered a moment.
Cecilia interrupted his thoughts. ‘You know I’m going to be late in the morning? Dentist appointment.’
‘Rebecca and Daniel will have to watch over their mother. Is she in bed now?’
‘At half past six. As usual.’
‘Hi, Dad!’ Mobile phone in hand, Rebecca emerged from the front room. ‘Dad, I’ve run out of credit on my phone.’
‘Once your monthly allowance is gone, it’s gone.’ He held out his hand. ‘Give it to me, Rebecca.’ Only her eyes moved – towards the landline. ‘If I catch you using the landline, Rebecca, I’ll confiscate your mobile for a month.’ She gave him her phone and ran up the stairs to her room.
‘Good day at the hospital, Mr Tanner?’
‘Same old. How were things here?’ He checked the answer machine. ‘00 MSG’. Good.
‘Eventful by our standards.’
‘Did Gillian have one of her moments?’
‘No, but she did have a visitor.’
‘Oh? Who?’
‘A police officer, Detective Sergeant Karl Stone. He wanted to ask Mrs Tanner about the Patel family in Aigburth. I think he went to the hospital to look for you.’
‘He did, yes. I spoke to him briefly in my office.’
‘What a terrible thing to happen.’
‘Dreadful.’
Silence. Then the grandfather clock chimed seven.
‘Your dinner’s in the microwave, Maisy’s had her bath, Rebecca and Daniel have been fine.’
‘They stayed in all day, I hope, as per my instructions?’
‘Of course. They wouldn’t dream of disobeying you. I wouldn’t let them, even if they wanted to.’
Cecilia opened the front door and watched a light snow shower pass across the cast of Ullet Road’s streetlights.
‘You’re letting all the warm air escape, the heating.’
‘Dock it from my wages, face-ache,’ whispered Cecilia.
; ‘I didn’t catch that.’
‘I got the impression you knew the Patels.’
Mr Tanner clenched his jaw and turned slightly. ‘What’s for supper?’
‘Bully beef and chips.’ She smiled. ‘Beef casserole.’
She walked down the path, away from the Tanners’, the snow pelting down on her head and a dead weight lifting from her back.
The phone in the hallway rang. Six rings later, the answer machine kicked in. The automated message played out and there was a pause after the bleep.
‘I’d like to leave a message for Mr Daniel Tanner. My name is Detective Sergeant Karl Stone and I came to the Royal today to see you. Unfortunately, you weren’t there.’
The blood drained from Tanner’s face.
‘I’d like to come and see you first thing in the morning. Seven o’clock. I’ll come to you. Ring me if there’s a problem with that, but we do need to talk at the next possible opportunity. 07744 468768.’
No one will be answering the door to you, thought Daniel Turner as he deleted the message and unplugged the phone. Stone could press the bell and keep his finger there all day. No one will be calling here.
No one. No one. No one!
43
7.07 pm
In the distance, from the incident room on the top floor of Trinity Road police station, Clay could see the illuminated structure of the Runcorn Bridge. It looked like the skeleton of a huge prehistoric beast, suspended in the mid-air darkness and buffeted by the snow travelling over the flat mud of the Mersey estuary.
On her desk were three literacy books from Mrs Harry’s class, left open for her by Hendricks, with a note: Best of the bunch.
She checked the names on the covers.
Connor Stephens. Faith Drake. Donna Rice.
Clay opened Faith’s book and noted the careful drawing of Joseph Williamson’s face framed by an underground arch.
The Williamson Tunnels
Why did Joseph Williamson build his Tunnels?
Joseph Williamson (1769–1840) was a Christian and belonged to St Thomas’ Church. He wanted to help soldiers with no jobs after the war with Napolyeom. Because he was kind. So he payed them to dig tunnels under the grouend in Edghe Hill. But he was also a strange man with funnny little ways. Like counting his wheelbarrow collection and leaving a wheelbarrow in his front room. He let all his wife’s birds fly away.
Clay scanned Connor’s and Donna’s writing. It was the same information in different words.
She looked up at the six officers who were silently trudging through Adrian White’s three large handwritten books. Pens in hand, they scribbled occasional notes into spiral-bound pads, looking utterly puzzled. Clay recalled her own confusion, years ago, as she’d tried to decipher what read like a stream of completely fractured consciousness.
Hendricks handed her a cup of coffee.
‘How are you doing, Bill?’ she asked.
‘Sore pride. Belle Vale’s a maze, but it’s the Pearson boys’ back yard. I reckon they lost me before I even turned on the ignition. What’s the latest on Gina?’
‘She’s staying in overnight for observation. She put her hands up to block the blow from the baseball bat. Heavy bruising to the forehead, no fractures, but they’re worried about a potential brain haemorrhage.’
‘About Mrs Patel... The removal of her eyes...’
‘Go on!’ Clay sipped her coffee and waited.
‘Remember I mentioned the American killer Charles Albright, how he removed the eyes from his victims after they’d died? There was no symbolism in it, it was simple barbarism. But given the graffiti at the Patels’ house, and the connection with Adrian White, I’m going to make a speculative connection. Most religions have some sort of all-seeing Eye of Divinity – usually male. But it strikes me that our killers may see their Divine Eye as female. And, more specifically, matriarchal.’
‘The Matriarch?’ An inexplicable coldness ran through Clay.
‘Perhaps.’ Hendricks nodded. ‘Could their Satanic divinity be female?’
It was as if Hendricks had opened a door and behind that door was an almost blinding white light.
‘If it is, then why not a female counterpart on the other side? In taking Mrs Patel’s eyes, they were symbolically blinding God. Concealing certain of their actions and asserting their absolute authority.’
Behind the light was a shape, moving closer to the door, a form at once alien and familiar, a shape that threatened to overwhelm Clay with forbidden knowledge that would split her brain in two and change the way she saw and understood everything.
‘Let’s keep this to ourselves,’ she said. ‘My instincts are telling me you’re on to something. Keep spinning those plates.’
She raised her voice and addressed the officers trawling through White’s manuscripts. ‘Whatever you’ve seen or heard since we met up in The Serpentine last night, apply it to the concepts White comes out with in his writing. The murderers are going to hit again. Tonight, he said.’
‘How was he?’ asked Hendricks. ‘The Baptist?’
‘Physically well. Placid. Full of the joys of Satan.’
‘No change there then,’ said DS Stone. ‘Did you look into those beady eyes?’
‘If only I could down some Dettol and cleanse myself from the inside out.’
She nodded at White’s books. ‘As you may have realised by now, The Elemental is different to The Matriarch and The Beginning of the End of Time.’
‘In what way?’
‘The Elemental is a straightforward diary detailing his murder spree and how he used the elements, or the lack of them, to kill his victims. He either burned them to death, drowned them, buried them alive in the earth or strangled them.’
‘Nice guy.’
‘He also promised more to come when the so-called Red Cloud rises.’ Clay paused and looked from one officer to the other. ‘As you may recall me telling you before, the last thing White said to me when he’d been convicted was, The Red Cloud will rise from the belly of the city and when the Red Cloud rises, the river will run with blood.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m afraid that’s as much help as I can give you for now.’
Her desk phone rang. She picked up, listened and said, ‘I’ll be down there right away.’ She turned to Hendricks. ‘We’ve got a date. Interview Suite 1. Jon Pearson and his entourage.’
44
7.13 pm
‘You want to help your son, Mrs Pearson?’ Clay addressed Jon’s mother in the corner of Interview Suite 1.
She nodded. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Then reassure him in front of me that whatever he’s done, everything between the two of you will be fine.’
Clay looked at the boy. His young social worker was doing her best to attract his attention, but he sat like a waxwork. His solicitor, meanwhile, stared impassively at the space behind Hendricks’s head.
‘Have you got anywhere to stay tonight, Mrs Pearson?’
‘Yes.’
‘You understand that you won’t be able to go home for the foreseeable future?’ She looked puzzled. ‘It’s one thing that your older sons have committed a serious assault on a police officer, but right now they’re also prime suspects in a case of multiple murder. As we speak, I’ve got officers searching your house inside and out for evidence.’
What little light was still in her eyes dissolved.
Out of nowhere, Jon Pearson’s solicitor answered an unasked question. ‘Jon,’ she said. ‘Tell the truth, that’s my advice.’
Clay moved next to Hendricks and Mrs Pearson took her place next to Jon.
On the table between them was Jon’s book bag, the crumpled sheets of paper, a slim Oxford Reading Tree book and, in a transparent forensic evidence bag, Mrs Harry’s black Nokia E63 mobile phone.
Clay prompted Mrs Pearson with a glance.
‘Jon.’ She tugged at his arm until he looked at her. ‘I want you to know that whatever happens next, I will still love you come what may. Whatever you may have
done—’
‘But I haven’t done anything, Mum, honest to God.’
‘Whatever you may or may not have done, I will always love you and you will always be my son. You must tell the truth, do you understand?’
‘I have been telling the truth.’
‘Jon,’ began Clay, ‘what we’re going to do first of all, and it’s the only thing we’re going to be doing tonight because it’s getting late for a lad of your age, is we’re going to look at the items on the table and we’re going to establish ownership of those items. Do you understand?’
He was silent.
‘For instance,’ said Clay. She pointed at the bag. ‘Whose is that book bag?’
‘It’s mine,’ he replied.
‘Great, it’s that easy. Look, it’s even got your name across the panel at the top in big black capital letters. Is that your writing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Two out of two correct so far, Jon. And I’m going to put it to you that everything on the table that came out of your book bag belongs to you except for one item. Look at the table.’ He followed the instruction. ‘Tell me in your own words what you can see.’
He looked and was silent for a long, long time.
‘What can you see, Jon?’
‘A book bag, papers, a book. A mobile phone.’
‘And where did I find these things?’
‘In my brothers’ bedroom.’
‘And how did they get there?’
‘I brought them from school.’
‘We’ve had a look at the papers in your bag, Jon.’ Slowly, Clay drew the papers closer. She had rearranged them into a specific order. ‘Do the papers belong to you?’
‘No, not really.’
She turned over the first crumpled page and showed him a child-like pencil drawing of a robot made of hinged cuboids and the name in block capital letters: ‘THARG’.
‘Did you draw that?’
‘Yes. I did that on Friday morning.’
She showed the next piece.
‘That’s not my writing,’ he said.
