Exhibit

by Noir, Stella

  “She was a prostitute wasn’t she?” Daisy said.

  “Aye, and what of it?” Marsh said, without even looking at her, an acrid taste in his mouth.

  Elias was quiet. He was a perceptive child and he could tell something was already brewing between them. He hated conflict. Clare persisted.

  “Was she like the others, Daddy?’ she said. “Was she killed by the rope man?”

  “Clare!” Daisy said, annoyed. “This isn’t really dinner time conversation.”

  Devizes Marsh looked at his estranged wife, and then he looked at his daughter.

  “Eat your dinner, Clare”, he said.

  “But, Dad”, she complained. “They won’t say on TV and it’s your work. Don’t you know?”

  “Eat your dinner”, he said again. “Either that or you go to bed without that or the chocolate pudding.”

  “Eve’s pudding”, Daisy corrected him.

  “Whatever the fuck it is”, Marsh snapped, his voice a little louder than he wanted it to be. “Eve’s pudding.”

  Clare had seen outbursts like this before, and she wasn’t shocked. She knew her father had a foul temper. He filled his glass almost to the brim with wine.

  “I bet she was. Why don’t you catch him?” Clare said, ignoring her father’s temper.

  “It’s not as easy as that, love”, Marsh said, a little calmer now. “We’ll talk about it after dinner, you’re upsetting your mother. And Elias.”

  Clare looked at her mother, and then at Elias, whose eyes were firmly fixed on the plate below him. He’d hardly eaten a thing.

  The family ate in silence for a while, although not much eating seemed to be being done. Elias had finished and was sat on his hands. Clare was pushing peas around her plate with the back of her fork, and Marsh was drinking, waiting for it all to be over.

  “Shall I get the pudding?” Daisy said.

  “Aye, why the fuck not?” Marsh said, without thinking.

  “Dad! Stop swearing”, Clare said.

  Elias got down from the table without a word. Marsh grabbed his arm. “Hey where are you going, little man?” he said, and Elias tried to struggle away from him. “Hey”, Marsh said again and gripped the boys arm a little tighter so he couldn’t move.

  “Get off me, I hate you”, Elias shouted at his father. It was the first thing he’d said all night.

  “Let him go”, Daisy said.

  “I only want to talk to him”, Marsh said, and then “Ow, you little fucker”, when Elias sunk his teeth into his gripping hand. Marsh was about to slap the boy when Daisy interjected.

  “Don’t you dare touch him”, she said.

  Clare’s heart was beating while she watched. She was scared all of a sudden.

  Elias wriggled away, sat himself down in front of the TV and began to skim through the channels, as though he were alone and nothing untoward had just happened.

  “What the fuck is wrong with him?” Marsh said to his wife, when she sat back down.

  “Leave it, Devizes”, she warned him.

  They ate their pudding, and not one of them said another word, at least not one that was spoken.

  Clare reached for the wine, and emptied the bottle into her glass.

  “Are you not driving tonight?”

  ‘”Are you going to arrest me inspector?”, Daisy said.

  “Detective, for fuck sake. Detective Devizes Indigo Marsh, and no I’m not going to arrest you, although I might if you carry on looking at me like that.”

  “Indigo?” Clare said. “What kind of a name is Indigo?”

  “A solid one, that’s what”, Marsh said.

  “Dim”, Clare said.

  “What?”

  “Dim”, she said again. “Your initials spell out dim.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. Daisy started to join her.

  “Oh, you think that’s funny do you?” Marsh said. It was difficult to tell whether he was really pissed off, or was joking with them. He had that about him, Detective Marsh. He was difficult to read, it’s what made him a good police officer. Like a dog that’s been in the family for years, that suddenly bites a toddler’s neck open because it’s stepped on its tail.

  Daisy knew the ferocity of his temper, and although she’d been with the man for over fifteen years, fell in love with him and still felt an ember of that love burning now, when she saw that look in his eyes, she was terrified by what he could do, what he was capable of doing, and wanted to be as far away from him as possible. Marsh had a reputation for a fiery temper both at home and in work. His colleagues had been witnesses a number of times, and it was what led to both of the suspensions he had served. His arrest and case solution record the only thing that had kept him from being sacked.

  “Aye, and what is yours?” his said

  “I’m Calm she said. “Clare Alice Lister Marsh. Much better than dim.” She laughed again.

  “Where did the Lister come from?” Marsh said.

  “Where do you think?”Daisy said.

  “I know where it came from”, Marsh said, correcting himself. “Why is she using it?” Now directing his anger at his wife and not his daughter. “I thought we agreed not to use both surnames.”

  “I changed my mind”, Daisy said. “The kids don’t mind.”

  “Aye, but I do”, Marsh said. “Elias, what’s your surname?”

  Elias didn’t answer him.

  “It’s Lister-Marsh”, Daisy said.

  “I didn’t ask you”, Marsh said, chastising her. “Elias?”

  “Just leave him, Dad”, Clare said.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Oi”, Marsh said, annoyed now. He threw the cork from the bottle of wine at Elias to try and get his attention. It sailed over his head. Elias didn’t even notice it, or if he did, he didn’t care.

  “Fuck him”, Marsh said. It was meant to be just to himself, but both Clare and Daisy heard too. Neither of them bothered to reprimand him. He opened another bottle of wine, and finished the rest of a pudding he had no intention of ever eating again.

  After dinner, they all sat around the television for thirty minutes pretending, and consequently failing to be a normal family unit, until it was time for the children to go to bed.

  Devizes was never cut out to be a father, and he knew it. There was a time before Daisy when he had wanted children, but when he met her he’d already changed his mind. Clare was an accident, and Elias was an attempt to make amends for an affair he’d become embroiled in, when he was working on a long homicide case that he eventually solved, and for which he earned his promotion, and national record, as the highest ranking officer of his age.

  Elias was bound to hate him. He wondered if Daisy was turning them both against him. He seemed to have a better relationship with the girl than the boy.

  Daisy took them upstairs into the rooms they had grown up in and left over three years ago, and tucked them in, in turn. Devizes left this process to his wife. He had nothing to say to the boy that he would listen to, and Clare would only ask him about work, and the rope man case as it was being called, ridiculously, by the press, and he would only tell her and she’d have nightmares, and he’d get into trouble again with his wife. His still estranged wife as he took pains to remind himself.

  “Are you getting back together?” Clare asked her mother, when she tucked her in.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea at the moment, darling”, Daisy confessed

  “Then why are we here?”

  “So your father and I can talk to each other and so you can spend some time with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s important for us, as a family”, she said.

  “But we aren’t a family, are we?” Clare said, annoyed with her mother for being so stupid. “We stopped being a family ages ago.”

  “We’re still a family Clare. You’re father and I are still married, and you and Elias are our children.”

  “Yeah well it doesn’t feel like i
t. Elias hates him. And I hate him too.”

  She turned around, so she was facing away from her mother, and screwed her eyes shut.

  “You don’t mean that”, Daisy said.

  “Yes I do. I hate him, and I want to go back home”, Clare said.

  “See how you feel tomorrow”, Daisy said diplomatically.

  She clicked out the light, closed the door and returned to Devizes, who was sat watching the news with a glass of whiskey in his hand. The report was about the rope man killings of four prostitutes in the Lincoln County area. The girl they had dragged out of the water had been identified as part of the same investigation. Devizes clicked off the TV – there was nothing in the report that he didn’t already know.

  “What are you doing here, Daisy? Tom left already has he?”

  “Are you seeing anyone at the moment?” Daisy said, ignoring his question entirely.

  “What the fuck do you think? I’m working sixty hours a week on a case that is going nowhere. Do you think I’ve got time for anyone else?”

  “It’s never stopped you before.”

  “You left me remember. I tried to make it work.”

  Daisy drained the wine out of her glass and held it out towards Devizes so he would fill it back up with whiskey.

  “Still drinking then?”

  Now it was his turn to ignore the question. “What are you doing here, Daisy?” He asked her again.

  “I wanted to talk about us”, she said. “I wanted us to try again.”

  “Are you fucking serious?” Devizes said.

  “I want us to be a family again.”

  “Where has this come from? What about Tom and Steve, or Simon, whatever the fuck his name was.”

  “Scott.”

  “Scott, the fucking architect with the Audi. With presents for the kids and kisses and cuddles for the mother. I know how it fucking works. Don’t pretend to believe I don’t.”

  “Don’t be cute, Devizes, it doesn’t suit you.”

  “So they reject you and you come back here because nobody else wants you, is that it?”

  “I came back for a reconciliation.”

  “Is this for you and me, or the kids?”

  “They need stability Devizes. Elias is struggling at school. He’s shy, and quiet and I’m worried about him. You saw him tonight.”

  “Aye, I did. Needs a good smack he does.”

  “That’s not going to help him.”

  “It didn’t make it any worse for me.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Daisy sat down on the sofa next to her husband. Despite the problems they’d had, and the animosity they felt towards each other, there still remained something of what had brought them together in the first place. There was the curl at the edge of a smile, the glances, the familiarity and comfort of the movements they shared. The unspoken language that connected them, like two separate organisms living together in symbiosis.

  “So you want to try again? Fucking hell Daisy, of all the things I expected you to say to me tonight, I never saw that coming.”

  “I like to surprise you”, she said.

  “I thought you were here for me to sign divorce papers. I thought you’d come because you needed money.”

  “Do you still love me?” Daisy asked him. She put his hand over his. His was still clutched to the whiskey glass as though this moment would represent the choice he had made in life. One path was his wife, the other was his drink. The mistress booze that had led him astray for as long as he could remember.

  “Aye”, he said to her. “I do. I never stopped fucking loving you.’

  “And the kids?”

  “Aye”, he said. “You know I do. They’re my kids.”

  “Then please help me rebuild this family”, Daisy said.

  Devizes didn’t respond. Instead, he filled up his glass again, then topped up the little Daisy had drunk from her own.

  Chapter 4

  Marsh parked his car awkwardly across two spaces, not giving a shit about readjusting so someone else could get in. As he got out, shirt half untucked still and dark glasses across his face to block out the barely noticeable sun, he seemed to be in a hurry.

  The station was the normal hive of activity he hated, but had been unable to live without for the best part of his life. It was like his second skin. An addiction he hated himself for, but nonetheless could never give up. The reason Marsh hated it, was because he had the ability to find a negative in any situation. For him, happiness was not a natural disposition. Happiness made him wary. If someone wasn’t complaining about something, then they couldn’t see the world for what it really was. An unending state of piss-rich misery. He was a sallow cunt, as one of his colleagues often liked to describe him. A sallow Scottish cunt, but a hell of a good detective.

  “Morning, Detective”, Paul Carter called out to him.

  Carter was what Marsh described as a brown nosing butter boy. He wasn’t the only one.

  “Fuck off, Carter”, Marsh said. “Where is he?”

  “Brown’s got him all tied up and singing like a canary.”

  “Fuck off has he this is my case.”

  Marsh breezed past Carter’s desk without stopping. He went straight to Senior Detective Dean Hawking’s office, and nearly broke the door as he went in. Hawking was half way through a cherry yogurt, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing.

  “Marsh”, Dean Hawking said. “Nice to finally to see you.”

  “What’s Brown doing with my witness?”

  Hawking ran a spoonful of yogurt around his mouth before answering, pushing the creamy substance against the roof of his mouth with his tongue and savoring the flavor.

  “You’re still wearing your sunglasses”, he said.

  Marsh took them off hastily. His eyes looked like aerial photos of volcanoes several weeks after they’d erupted. Still Hawking didn’t answer him.

  “You enjoying that?” Devizes said to him.

  Hawking seemed miles away. He took the last spoonful out, sucked it down, put the empty yogurt pot in the bin, the licked clean spoon to the side, folded his fingers together and smiled at Marsh. Marsh watched every single one of his calculated movements with increasing irritation. When he was finally finished, it looked like Marsh was going to punch him off his chair.

  “It’s not the best flavor, no”, he said, his reddened lips returning to his well practiced shit eating grin when they were done moving the words from his cavernous mouth.

  “Where are they?”

  “It’s over Marsh. He’s going to give us a full statement. Relax. We’ve got him. The hard work is done.”

  “We’ve got him?”

  Dean Hawking was a fat man who liked rich foods and long working lunches a little too much. He was a pen pusher and a yes man, happy to hit his targets and go home at the end of the day and forget all about the grimy world in which he made his money. He could have just as easily been an accountant. He didn’t give a shit about his work, as long as he was dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.

  “He walks into a fucking police station in Hanley with his hands held up confessing to cutting up prostitutes and we’ve got him?”

  “Everything matches.”

  “I’ll say if everything matches. Where is he?”

  Hawking looked him over. He’d worked with Marsh long enough to know he wouldn’t let it rest.

  “They’re in number two”, he said.

  Marsh was almost out of the door before he’d finished his sentence.

  Hawking called out after him, “don’t go barging in there, Marsh”, he said. “I’m warning you. This is our man”, but Marsh was already half way down the corridor and well out of the way of earshot.

  Chapter 5

  The man that Devizes could see, sat opposite from Detective Mark Brown, both hands held around a mug of barely still warm coffee was Phillip Prensall. According to the file handed to him by Brown’s assistant, a pretty girl in her early twen
ties, who Marsh had discovered had abandonment issues and scars on the inside of her arms from self harming when he fucked her earlier that year, Prensall, was a truck driver for a furniture distribution company, lived alone in a small town on the outskirts of Hanley, had a history of mental illness and one minor conviction for affray.

  When he walked into Hanley police station to confess to the murder of four prostitutes in the Norfolk County areas, he was arrested immediately, and his house subsequently searched. There was nothing untoward, except for a large collection of internet pornography geared towards bdsm, and the infliction of pain. There were a few photographs included as an example in his file, which Marsh barely huffed at when he saw them. He had, often, done worse himself.

  “So what the fuck is this, Rebecca?” he asked the girl after snapping the slim file closed and handing it back to her.

  “He looks like he did it”, she said.

  “Aye, he does. And you look like you’d like anal sex, but sometimes looks can be deceptive.”

  Rebecca let the comment slip. Despite his obvious and quite serious social ineptitudes, she actually quite liked Marsh. She found his approach, in an often too politically correct world, quite refreshing. Besides which, he looked good, God knows how with his horrific diet of alcohol, coffee and little else, but he managed it, and he fucked like an animal. If she had her way, they’d still be fucking. Had she not let herself get too close and pressure him.

  “You can’t domesticate a wild animal”, a fellow colleague told her, who had shared a similar experience. “You’ve just got to let it do it’s thing. If you get the chance to appreciate it for a while, good on you, but don’t figure that you can capture it and look at it forever.”

  “He knows things about the girls”, Rebecca said.

  “So does half of Hanley”, Devizes countered.

  Prensall had a tick, and thick round glasses. His teeth were yellow, and even though he couldn’t detect it, he knew that he smelled bad, like rugs that have been left in damp basements too long. He looked like a murderer, but he wasn’t the murderer that Devizes wanted. He knew he didn’t do it.

  “Not like that”, Rebecca went on. “He knows about the murders.”

  “So does anyone with a fucking TV. This case has been plastered all over every single news channel for the last three months. Get him out of there.”