The Murder Diaries_Seven Times Over

by David Carter

  ‘Course not!’

  ‘So how did you get into it? And what do I call you, by the way? You must have a name.’

  ‘Sam, you can call me Sam.’

  ‘So, how did it happen, Sam, your idea or hers?’

  ‘I know what you are after!’

  ‘I’m not after anything. I’m hardly in a position to be after anything, am I?’ said Walter, glancing down at his hand ties.

  ‘Yes, well, just so long as you understand that. If I were in your position I’d be saying a few prayers to your God, if I were you, if you believe in that kind of thing. You haven’t got much time left.’

  ‘Do you believe in God, Sam?’

  He thought about that for a second. ‘Yes, maybe, sometimes.’

  ‘And you’re ready to meet him, knowing what you have done?’

  ‘God will be merciful. And anyway, I have a sneaking suspicion God is a woman.’

  ‘That’s a novel take.’

  ‘Let’s face it, Walter; none of us has any idea what God is like. God could be a gigantic chicken for all we know, and imagine how angry that great Cock in sky will be when we meet it. Had chicken for dinner, did you? That’s not going to go down well, is it? Sorry God, I’ve been eating your children for these past fifty years.’

  That little laugh again. Some people might find that attractive. Predatory men for example, this guy would be in big demand in a high security prison. How would he cope with that? Maybe he’d like it. Maybe it was time to change the subject.

  ‘Tell me about Desiree?’

  ‘Just you remember, Darriteau, this time tomorrow, you’ll be long gone! Kaput!’

  ‘There’s not a lot I can do about that.’

  ‘You are dead right there, pal!’

  ‘Tell me about Desiree?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything. I’ve got time,’ and forgetting his dire situation for a second, Walter couldn’t keep a sly grin from spreading over his drooping chops.

  ‘That’s one thing you don’t have!’

  Walter glanced at the clock.

  ‘It’s only quarter past eleven. I’m not due on till eight. No one will miss me till nine. That’s ten hours away. We’ve got plenty of time. Tell me about Desiree? After all, it’s what this thing’s all about, isn’t it?’

  Sam backed away. Sat in the chair in the corner. Crossed his legs. Thought a moment.

  ‘She was strikingly beautiful, not classically beautiful, but once you’d seen her, you’d never forget her.’

  A moony look came over his fair face, the kind of look Jenny Thompson occasionally portrayed when she was reading those love novels in the lunch break she adored so much.

  ‘She meant a lot to you?’

  ‘She was everything to me! She said we were soul mates, I was her other half, and she sure as hell was mine.’

  ‘And you started wearing her clothes. Was that before she died, or afterwards?’

  ‘Before, don’t be ridiculous, long before!’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  He closed his eyes, as if remembering, as if he were thinking things through, as if he didn’t want to answer, as if maybe, he was ashamed of the answer, thinking he might come across as some kind of weirdo.

  ‘You can tell me, Sam, I’m going to my maker, remember. No one will ever know.’

  ‘Just so long as you understand that! When we have finished talking, that stuff,’ and he pointed to the bottles, ‘is going into you!’

  Walter glanced back at the table, at the bottles.

  Didn’t like what he saw.

  ‘What’s with the different coloured tops?’

  Sam smiled. ‘RGB, red, green, blue.’

  ‘I can see that. What’s the difference?’

  Sam grinned again, not so prettily this time.

  ‘Red... is rat. Green... is great ape; chimpanzee to be exact. Blue is basset hound, pretty doggy to you and me. And the thing is, Walter, I am going to give you the choice of which you’d prefer. Interesting, eh?’

  It was interesting all right, but not that interesting, and anyway Walter didn’t appreciate the thread of conversation, preferred to talk about Desiree Holloway, didn’t want to talk about the blood in the bottles at all, but before he could say anything else, Sam was already talking again.

  ‘Come on Wally; rat, doggy, or chimp?’

  ‘I can’t possibly decide on that.’

  ‘You don’t make a decision, you get them all! And you get them now!’

  It was a threat that Walter took seriously. Talking about it seemed to rile the guy, and that was always frowned on in hostage school. Rule number one: Never make the hostage taker mad, never antagonise them. Another rule broken. Wasn’t the first; sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.

  ‘What’s in the glass phial?’

  ‘Ah, now that’s an interesting question, it’s what we call witches’ brew. Blow you away it would, blow the whole street away, come to that, I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do with it, but take it from me, Wally baby, you don’t want to get too close to it.’

  ‘Suits me, Sam.’

  ‘Red, green, or blue? Last chance!’

  ‘Green.’

  Sam relaxed in the chair.

  ‘Great ape! Good choice. Any reason?’

  ‘Our nearest living relative; seemed logical.’

  Sam nodded and said, ‘I’d have chosen green too, if I were in your shoes,’ then he went into thinking mode again, and Walter didn’t want that. You could never tell what the guy was thinking about, or what he would do next.

  Walter said, ‘Tell me about Desiree?’

  Sam smiled at her memory. He couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Tell me about how you got into cross-dressing.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I’m trying to paint in the background, to understand everything about the case, about you. It’ll let me die happy, my last dying wish, if you like.’

  ‘Desiree didn’t die happy!’

  ‘Why not? Tell me about it, Sam; it will do you good to get it off your chest. Why didn’t Desiree die happy?’

  ‘It’s very complicated.’

  ‘I am sure it is. We’ve got time, Sam. Tell me everything about Desiree, she sounds a fascinating person. I’d really like to know.’

  ‘She was a genius.’

  ‘Really? A genius. Wow!’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘Far too good for this world.’

  ‘Tell me all about Desiree, Sam, it’s killing me not knowing.’

  Pretty boy giggled. ‘It’s killing you knowing, that’s your problem.’

  ‘I can live with that.’

  ‘You can die with it too.’

  ‘We all have to die sometime.’

  ‘Yeah, but not today, eh?’

  He lifted his right hand and made a gun shape and pointed it at Walter’s head and said, ‘Bang, bang, you’re toast.’

  ‘Tell me about Desiree, Sam... please.’

  It was the please that did it. Sam always knew he was a soft touch.

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. Everything.’

  ‘One condition.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘You don’t tell anyone,’ and he did that pretty boy laugh again.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Walter.

  ‘All right, Walter, Wally, Inspector Darriteau, why did you never make Superintendent by the way? Don’t answer that, I can guess, not clever enough, eh, sticks out a mile, now where were we?’

  ‘You were going to tell me about Desiree.’

  ‘Yeah, you got it, all right; just this once, and afterwards you get the green.’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘It is what I want.’

  ‘You’re the man.’

  ‘Don’t you forget it!’

  Chapter Forty-Six

  DC Gibbons arrived at Thomas Telford house at five past ten. Went to the door and pressed f
ifty. Karen’s metallic voice appeared to one side of the door. ‘Hello?’ she croaked.

  ‘Hi there.’

  ‘Come on up,’ and the door sprang open.

  Up in the flat Karen whispered, ‘Do you fancy a beer?’ opening the fridge and demonstrating the well packed shiny green cans.

  ‘Nah, rather have a coffee.’

  She rather liked that. She’d always considered Gibbons to be some kind of boorish lager lout. She set the coffee machine burbling and told him to go through to the lounge area.

  ‘How do you like it?’ she said, straining what remained of her voice.

  ‘Milk, dash of shug-shug.’

  She brought the mug in and set it on the coffee table, and sat on the two-seater sofa. He was sitting in the chair by the window. The curtains or blinds or whatever she had, were still wide open, and he could see the headlights of cars dashing along the inner ring road, and occasionally heard the sound of a honking impatient driver or the beep-borp of an ambulance. The sodium light glistened on the damp road and bounced off the contrasting flat and still waters of the canal. It was a peaceful picture. It was a nice place to live. Gibbons couldn’t wait to have a gaff like it.

  ‘So,’ she said, still struggling to get out her words. ‘How goes it?’

  ‘Yeah, good, Walter thinks we might make an arrest tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah? Really?’

  ‘Yeah, that address you gave him, came up with a weird couple, Sam and Samantha Holloway. Walter thinks they are one and the same person, away today, back tomorrow apparently; we’re going in early doors to the flat next door. When they, or he or she, or it, comes home, we’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Christ I hope so. That’s a relief, I can tell you. Have we been inside their place yet?’

  ‘Nope, search warrant all ready, being turned over tomorrow.’

  ‘It was Walter who put me on to it,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, how?’

  ‘He figured out it was someone with a major grudge. Holloway was the one that stuck out. Obvious really when you think about it.’

  ‘It’s always obvious afterwards.’

  ‘Yeah, suppose so, I vaguely remember this guy, coming to the station three or four times, demanding that we investigate a suicide further, his girlfriend apparently. I never saw him myself, just remember the desk sergeant going on and on about this bloody nuisance who kept coming back. He was boring the life out of him.’

  She coughed and tried to clear her throat. Perhaps she shouldn’t be talking at all, thought Gibbons, and then he said, ‘So he thought, this guy, that the suicide was murder?’

  ‘Must have done.’

  ‘And could it have been?’

  ‘Nah, several witnesses said she jumped in front of the train, middle of the morning. No doubt.’

  ‘Bloody way to go.’

  ‘Terrible way. The station was unusually crammed at the time.’

  ‘All pressed up against one another?’

  ‘Yep, probably.’

  ‘So someone behind could have given her the slightest of nudges, just enough to send her over the edge, and I suppose it was possible no one saw it.’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll never know now.’

  ‘So his girlfriend is killed, accident, murder or suicide, we don’t know which, and he broods about it for quite a while, and then decides to go on a murdering spree. Does that sound right to you?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Looks like something must have sent him or her over the edge. Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow.’

  ‘I bloody hope so; this case has gone on long enough.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ she said, reaching forward for her ice-cold cranberry juice she was sipping to ease her throat.

  ‘What do we know about the dead girlfriend?’ asked Gibbons.

  ‘Not much. Bit of a high flyer. Worked in some chemical company down on the Cheshire-Shropshire border, from what I recall.’

  ‘And what did the guy do?’

  ‘Don’t know, no idea, don’t think we ever knew. Did you find out anything yesterday?’

  ‘Jenny was telling me the old lady living next door said he was a writer; and a very successful one too. Apparently he’d just won a million dollar contract in the States.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  Gibbons pulled a face. ‘Seems a bit far fetched to me, perhaps he’s a Walter Mitty type guy.’

  ‘Yeah, that rings true. Hopefully we’ll find out tomorrow.’

  Gibbons sipped the coffee.

  ‘There’s something that’s worrying me,’ she said. ‘Something doesn’t fit. It’s why I asked you over.’

  ‘Yeah, like what?’

  ‘He tried to murder me, right?’

  Gibbons drained his drink and said, ‘Yep, he did.’

  ‘Well, he now knows he didn’t succeed, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He does if he watches the telly.’

  ‘Bound to, these people always get off on the publicity.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘That he might come back, try again. Come here, maybe.’

  ‘No, he can’t. Does he know where you live?’

  ‘Hope not, but we all know with the bloody Internet you can always find out where anyone lives if you try hard enough.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. This time tomorrow he’ll be behind bars.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s not yet, is he? I don’t want to be alone. Could you stay over tonight? Sleep in the spare room? I’d feel a lot safer.’

  Gibbons pulled a happy face. ‘Sure if that’s what you want.’

  ‘It is; thanks. I appreciate it.’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Sam sat in the chair in the corner and closed his eyes tight. A picture of Desiree flooded into his head. It was so realistic, so colourful; so close, he could almost touch her, smell her; it was as if she was there with him now. A contented expression spread over his cute face, and then his eyes opened and he realised that she wasn’t there at all, and his face turned sour. Not a good moment for Walter.

  Then Sam said, as if remembering he’d told Walter he would tell him all about her, before he put him out of his misery, put him out of this world for good like an old dog being put down.

  ‘We were exactly the same size.’

  ‘You and Desiree?’

  Sam bobbed his head. ‘Yep, identical, except for her narrower waist and boobies of course. Same height, same weight, same shoe size, we just seemed to fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw. I’d never experienced anything like it before, and she said exactly the same thing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’d been out to dinner, some expensive place, she was doing really well in her work, didn’t mind paying, can you imagine that, a wonderful, beautiful woman who couldn’t get enough of me, and she paid as well!’

  ‘For the meal?’

  ‘Course for the meal. What do you think, sex? Christ, Desiree would never have to pay for sex; they were queuing round the block for her. She told me the other guys at work were always making passes at her, and back at uni too, almost every bloody day.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘We had an extra bottle of wine; shouldn’t have done, I suppose, but we did.’

  ‘And all inhibitions flew out the window?’

  Sam smiled at the memories.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Are you getting your rocks off on this, Walter, you dirty old bugger.’

  ‘I am trying to understand.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, I believe you, thousands wouldn’t.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I took her dress off.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She said: You put it on.’

  ‘I will if you will.’

  ‘And you did?’

  ‘Yeah, anything for a bit of fun, I mean not just the dress, every goddamned thing, knickers, suspenders, stockings, the whole fucking shebang, she insisted on it, her, stand
ing there in my best suit and tie. She made me fix up the tie for her, she couldn’t do it herself, me in her red shoes, her in my shiny black ones, oh man, it was a weird sight, and then she started on the makeup.’

  ‘She made you up?’

  ‘Yeah, made me up good and proper. Have you ever worn red lippy, Walter?’

  Walter grinned at the thought. ‘Don’t think it would suit me.’

  ‘No, you’re probably right.’

  ‘You enjoyed it?’

  ‘I bloody did. That was the weird thing about it, never had any cross-dressing ideas before, but with her, it just seemed to be the most natural thing in the world.’

  Natural behaviour wasn’t quite how Walter would have described it.

  ‘Then she said: You need a wig... and some tits.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can do about that.’

  ‘No, she said, but leave it with me,’ and we stood in front of the mirror, hand in hand, her in my grey suit, white shirt and tie, me in her red party frock, and lippy, drunkenly grinning at our images. ‘You make a fabulous woman,’ she said, and I have to admit, I did. I’d have fancied me if I’d seen that person in the mirror strolling through Tattersalls at the races on Ladies’ Day. You would have too, Walter, I guarantee it.’

  ‘Maybe I would.’

  ‘She didn’t make such a great guy, and I think she knew it. She didn’t look like a guy, and secretly I think she was happy about that, and I sure as hell was, and then we slowly undressed each other, and you can guess the rest.’

  ‘You made love?’

  ‘You really want to know all the freaky little details, don’t you, Walter, you naughty boy. Yes, we made love, but more than that, we made love like we had never done before, ’cept perhaps the first time, and afterwards Desi said exactly the same thing, and I believed her. She was a bit freaky that way. Something had gone down at college. I think she had a wild time there. I never found out exactly what, but I’ll tell you one thing, Walter, if your sex life is ever in a rut, put on a red frock and some lippy, you’ll be amazed at the results, except, shame, it’s too late for you now, Walter, isn’t it, so don’t go getting any crazy ideas, but at least you’ll pass over with the benefit of my expertise.’

  Walter’s sex life was infrequent at best, but that was his business, and he had no intention of discussing it with the freak.