‘You do that again and I’ll arrest you for assault.’
‘Mmm, well that might not go down too well at headquarters, eh? Might raise a few eyebrows. Confirm a few suspicions, eh?’
Snow really wanted to batter him now, but with great effort he pulled in his horns. When anger threatened to overwhelm his common sense, Snow had the great facility to step back from the situation and assess the fallout if he allowed his emotions their full rein. In this case, part of this mental assessment concerned a series of questions which disturbed him: why are you angry in the first place? Is it because you have been assaulted in a minor way? Is it because Roger has quite accurately assessed your sexual predilections? Is it because the kiss did not disgust you?
Snow was afraid of the answers.
He realised that the only sensible course of action for the moment was to escape from the situation. Escape. It seemed cowardly to him to think of it in those terms, but it was also prudent. Without another word, he turned on his heel and left the flat. Two images fought for prominence in his mind as he made his way down the rank smelling stairs to the fresh air beyond: his last view of Roger sitting on the bed, his hair rumpled and tie askew, a broad knowing grin on his face; and that kiss – the warm moist force of it on his lips.
That night Paul Snow lay awake unable to sleep. The incident with Roger in his flat had disturbed him greatly and part of his mind would not fully admit why. That way madness lies, he told himself. He kept running the scene over and over in his mind, reducing the images to slow motion when it came to that kiss. He felt it as though it were happening all over again and he felt his body stiffen with emotion. Oh, shit, his mind screamed as he sensed that his own personal walls of Jericho were starting to crumble.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Lucy Anderson walked down the street in what would seem to a casual observer as a nonchalant if rather robotic fashion. She was carrying a large canvas shopping bag which bore the legend ‘Love Life. Eat Well.’ Inside the bulging bag, well protected by several plastic bags and newspaper was the body of a dead baby.
She shouldn’t have done it. She should have controlled herself. It was a moment of madness.
It was murder.
She gulped awkwardly at the thought of that word and fierce hot tears sprang to her eyes. She wiped them away quickly with her free hand. She mustn’t draw attention to herself. No one must suspect her. No one must look at her. Wonder what was in the bag. It was groceries, dummy. Just groceries. What else? It’s a bloody shopping bag.
The deed was done now and so she had to get rid of the evidence.
In her disturbed state Lucy Anderson did not see herself as a bad woman. She had been driven to do what she did. If only the baby had stopped crying. No one could put up with that. Crying, crying, crying… Its constant scream had pierced her brain until she hadn’t been able to think straight. It was like a shrieking drill boring into her head. No matter what she did – hugs, rocking, feeding, toys – the crying did not stop. It was ceaseless. There was no respite. Her medication didn’t help, even though she upped her dosage in an attempt to ease her pain. In the end she came to believe the baby was doing it deliberately. Punishing her. It was a demon child sent to torment her for her sins.
She peered over the cot, gazing at that shrieking shiny, red-faced brat with all the facial contortions of a gargoyle. Yes, there could be no doubt this thing was plaguing her on purpose. It was its mission to drive her mad. She made the sign of the cross over the child and this only seemed to increase the volume of its yells. She warned the foul thing that if it did not ‘shut the fuck up, it will be the worse for you’, but the creature took notice. It blithely ignored the warning and carried on crying.
She put the cot in the airing cupboard and shut the door on it, but she could still hear the child with its unrelenting banshee wails.
It was then that she snapped. It had to die. That was the solution. That would bring silence and calm back once more. With this realisation she felt a refreshing serenity possess her. With slow precision she took the child into her bedroom, still wriggling and bellowing. She saw it now not as a small human being but as an alien entity, a monster of evil, something disgusting that must be destroyed.
With slow precise movements, she took one of the pillows from her bed and, gently at first, placed it over the baby’s face. Once in position, she pushed down with great force. She felt the creature wriggle beneath her, but to her delight the cries eventually lessened. Until they stopped altogether, along with any movement. The thing lay still and silent. She stayed with the pillow pressing down on the dead child for over a minute just to be sure. And then slowly she removed it and gazed down on the fragile form on the bed, its little mouth still open, eyes bulging, but silent now.
At first, she smiled, even chuckled at her success in stopping the noise, that piercing stiletto shriek jabbing in her ears was now replaced by a strange hissing silence. It was wonderful. And then, as night time shadows faded with the morning light, the reality of what she had done broke over her like a giant wave. Her body shook as she realised the full horror of her actions. Ice filled her veins and she choked on her own agonised cries. In desperation, she snatched up the baby and hugged it to her breast, showering its tiny head with kisses in the vain hope of reviving the child. But it remained a corpse, limp and lifeless in her tight embrace. She sank to the floor sobbing, still clasping the baby to her bosom.
She stayed like that for some considerable time. At length the tears subsided, but she remained, like a hunched statue, crouching by the bed with her tiny daughter. Gradually, sleep overcame her and she slipped into unconsciousness for an hour. When she awoke, she was cold, shivering and groggy. Then she saw the baby in her arms and the horror of her actions came back to her again.
The next day was like a living nightmare. She placed the baby in its crib and tried to act normally. She tried watching television but her mind kept slipping back to her corpse child. She constantly returned to the crib to gaze down at the baby, half hoping that she had been mistaken. She wasn’t really dead, just asleep. It would wake soon and begin to cry again. But the face was immobile, twisted into that silent scream and now the face had begun to turn blue.
It was then that Lucy’s sense of self-preservation and survival began to rise within her. She knew that she could not leave the thing in the flat. She had to get rid of the body – for that is what it was now: just a dead thing. She was brave enough now to think of it in those terms. It was dead. There was no going back on that. She hadn’t meant to kill it but, God forgive her, she had and no doubt he would take out his own punishment on her. In the meantime, she had to dispose of the thing before it began to decompose and smell. She hated bad smells.
By the time she began to assemble the packing material, all emotion had drained from her mind and body. She moved methodically, precisely and stoically as though she was preparing a parcel for the post. She placed the baby inside a large plastic bag to begin with and taped that up securely. She then placed this inside another, thick plastic bag and continued this process until she had completely obliterated the shape of the little body inside. She then lowered this into the large canvas shopping bag and covered it up with old newspapers.
She stood back to admire her handiwork and smiled a crooked smile. No one would ever suspect that the bag held a dead baby.
Now she was walking down a street at the other side of town, far away from her own little flat. Soon she came to the building she wanted: the Wah Yung Chinese Restaurant. She’d had many of their cheap special lunches in there – so called ‘business lunches’ although she had no business. Slipping down the side street at the far right of the restaurant and checking that there was no one else in sight, she entered the yard at the back of the premises. It was here that there were two large industrial-sized garbage bins, receptacles for the restaurant’s waste. She glanced round to ascertain that the place was deserted and then placing the shopping back on the
ground, she heaved the large lid up on one of the bins exposing the rotting contents. A pungent aroma escaped, assailing her nostrils. She gagged momentarily and stepped back. The inconsequential thought crossed her mind that it was fortunate this wasn’t summer for with the heat the stench would be more powerful and there would be a strong likelihood of flies and maggots to contend with.
Swiftly, she retrieved the shopping bag from the floor and emptied the wrapped contents into the bin. It slipped in easily, the weight causing it to sink down. Lucy leaned over the edge of the bin and pulled some of the stinking detritus over the top of the bundle to cover it up. This close contact with the rotting food made her gorge rise and it was with a gasp of relief that she was able to pull back and allow the lid to close again. She gazed at the bin for a moment. It was, she admitted, an unfitting grave for her baby, but a necessary one. God would forgive her, wouldn’t he?
She left the yard and returned to the main street. She headed to the nearest public house. Alcohol would help to ease her guilt. Surely?
CHAPTER
TWENTY ONE
Goodall’s Garage (Servicing, Repairs & MOTs) was a small outfit housed under the arches of the viaducts on the appropriately named Viaduct Street at the far end of town. There were a number of vehicles parked outside the entrance – all of them at least three years old. Passing through the massive open sliding doors, Paul Snow found himself in a large, high-ceilinged gloomy chamber not unlike a small aircraft hangar. Fluorescent strip lights hung down from the ceiling providing some meagre illumination. At the far end was a hydraulic lift, holding an old Cortina. It was raised from the ground and two men in dark oil-stained overalls were working on the underside of it. One held a spot lamp while the other was adjusting something with a spanner.
A stout man in a red boilersuit came out of the box-like office built into the wall by the door and approached Snow. ‘Can I help?’ he said brusquely in an unsmiling manner that seemed to suggest to Snow that the man was intimating that he was trespassing on his premises.
Snow was happy to take the wind out of his sails. He held up his warrant card. ‘Police,’ he said in a tone that echoed that of the garage man.
The man in red overalls sighed as though to say, ‘What now?’
‘Mr Goodall?’
‘Mr Goodall is dead. Been gone five years or so. I own the business now. Finch. Stewart Finch. Just kept the name on because the place had got a good reputation. What’s the problem, officer?’ There was almost a sneer on the word ‘officer’.
‘It’s about Frank Sullivan.’
‘Oh, him. Well, I had one of your boys round here asking about Frank only the other day. I told him all I knew.’
Which was nothing, thought Snow. He’d read the report, which noted that Sullivan was a decent worker if a bit slow. He kept himself to himself. Didn’t give much away. Finch didn’t even know which soccer team he supported. That was about it.
‘Just thought I’d check things out again.’
Finch shrugged. He was obviously not impressed. ‘Well, what d’you want? I’ve nothing more to give you.’
‘You’ve no idea if Frank had any enemies – or friends even.’
Finch laughed derisively. ‘This isn’t a social club. It’s a garage. We turn up at eight-thirty, fix a few cars and go home. End of story.’
‘No one came to see him here. A man…. A woman?’
Finch grinned at the mention of a woman. ‘A woman? Don’t make me laugh.’ He shook his head. ‘I told the other copper, no one came here to see him.’
Snow could see that he was not going to get anywhere with this belligerent soul. Maybe he’d had an unpleasant experience with the police and he still bore the scars.
‘Tell you what you can do,’ Finch said suddenly as though a thought had just struck him. ‘You can take his stuff away.’
‘Stuff.’
‘Aye, from his locker. There’s some of his personal clobber in there. I don’t want it and I reckoned if I chucked it out you’d be on my back. He’s no close family to send it to, so you’d better have it. I’ll be needing the locker for the new bloke when I can find one. Good mechanics are like hen’s teeth.’
‘Let me have a look.’
Without a word, the garage man led Snow to a row of four rusting metal cabinets on the far wall and pulled open the door of the end one. It creaked noisily as he did so, filling the cavernous space with a high-pitched noise that sounded like a child’s scream.
‘That’s his stuff,’ said Finch.
His stuff did not amount to much. There was just a thermos flask and some heavy duty boots at the bottom of the cabinet. These were nestling on a small pile of girlie magazines. A pair of greasy dungarees hung from a hook inside and there was a picture of Jesus stuck to the back of the door. It was the same one that he’d seen in Sammy Tindall’s house: a simple crude sentimentalised image in garish colours.
‘I’ll get a bag from my car and take these away,’ said Snow.
‘Good man,’ replied Finch without enthusiasm.
As he bagged the contents of the cabinet up, Snow was convinced there was really nothing here that would aid him in his investigation. Well, except one thing. And once again he thought about that street light near his office suddenly going out and leaving the street in darkness.
CHAPTER
TWENTY TWO
After the third vodka, she began to cry. She sat cradling the empty glass in the midday gloom of the Shoehorn Bar and allowed the silent tears to flow. She felt her mind ripple with a mixture of emotions, not quite sure why she was so upset. Was it relief, guilt, desperation at her shit life or just physical and emotional exhaustion that had brought on this lachrymose reaction? Whatever, the tears were a wonderful release – a kind of absolution. That was it. She considered this possibility for a few moments and then sniffed. Absolution? Was it buggery. Absolution, my arse. She was fantasising now. Surely it was self-pity that prompted the tears. She just felt bloody sorry for herself. Whatever, she knew two things: it was helping her adjust to what she had done and she needed another drink.
Wiping her face with her sleeve, she left her quiet, dim corner and made her way to the bar where the barman, an old bloke with long straggly white hair and a boozer’s nose was smoking a roll up as he perused the sports pages of a tabloid newspaper.
She asked for another vodka. With a twitch of irritation at being disturbed from his analysis of the runners and riders and without giving Lucy a glance, he swiftly procured the drink and slapped it in the counter. ‘One pound ten,’ he said in the tones of a speak your weight machine.
She paid in small change, her meagre supply of cash now running very low, and retired to her shady corner to drink and contemplate her lot once more. The vodka helped but it began to put a different perspective on her outlook. Now guilt rose like a dark cloud on the horizon, enveloping her in its sable embrace. Remorse welled up inside her and once more she began to cry. ‘Bloody hell,’ she whispered to herself, between silent sobs, ‘this can’t go on. It just can’t.’
The distance along New Street from the Shoehorn Bar to the far end of town and the police station is less than half a mile, but with three vodkas swilling inside her and the bitter December wind chilling her to the marrow, it seemed to Lucy like a marathon trek. Her feet shuffled on the pavement as the sharp frosty air mingled with the alcohol intensifying her inebriation. More than once she bumped into a passing pedestrian, uttering a muffled, belated slurry, ‘Sorry’, after they had moved on and were out of earshot.
When she reached the police station, she hesitated. Was she up to this? Could she really confess? Was that the answer she sought? She walked past the entrance and on to the end of the street before turning round and making her way back, her mind spinning with questions. Perhaps she needed another drink to give her that extra burst of courage. Either that or she shouldn’t have had the last vodka.
As she vacillated on the pavement, a uniformed policewoman came up behind
her. ‘Can I help you, love?’
Lucy turned around startled. ‘Help me?’ she asked, not sure what the woman meant.
The policewoman narrowed her eyes. The voice and the alcoholic fumes told her that this girl was drunk.
‘I’ve come to confess,’ Lucy said with a sudden dramatic gesture.
‘Have you now? It might be best to go home and sleep it off first.’
‘No, no. I gotta do it now. Confess. You have got to let me confess.’
‘OK, love,’ said the police woman, taking Lucy’s arm and gently guiding through the doors of the police station.
‘Take a seat there and I’ll get you a coffee.’
‘I want to confess.’
‘Of course you do. The officer at the counter, Constable Purvis over there, will take down your statement after you’ve had a coffee, eh?’
The policewoman turned to her colleague behind the desk, rolled her eyes and mouthed the word ‘Pissed.’
Constable Purvis smiled and leaned over the counter. ‘You sit a while, little lady. I’ll attend to you shortly,’ he said. Lucy did as she was told while the policewoman, who had escorted her in, disappeared through a door, presumably to get her a coffee. All of a sudden, Lucy began to feel clammy and uncomfortable. The room was stuffy and dimly lit by a single fluorescent tube and a small rectangular window high up on the outer wall. It had bars across it – like prison bars.
PC Purvis was attending to some paperwork on the counter as though he had already forgotten about this inebriated woman who wanted to confess. Slowly, with a kind of chilling awareness, Lucy began to realise the enormity of what she was about to do. And what would happen to her after she had unburdened herself. Suddenly, fear gripped her soul as a though her body had been placed in a huge vice. She shuddered so hard that she almost cried with the shock of it. Her eyes wandered up once more to the window and those bars. Dark streaks again the pale blue sky beyond.
Blood Rites: A Detective Inspector Paul Snow thriller Page 13
