by Stav Sherez
‘Not this bit. This is the north wing. You were on the other side of that brick wall.’ He pointed over her shoulder to the door she’d placed so much hope in. ‘This building has many strange features, rooms that don’t make any sense. It’s far more fun when you’re in an altered state, as I’m sure you’ll soon discover.’
She glanced over at the damp walls and concrete floor. ‘This is where you brought the girls?’
Bob pointed to a faint striping of scratch marks scored into the brick. ‘As you can see, they left their mark.’
She tried not to think of Anna and Madison captive in this dank basement, both awaiting equally terrible fates, but it was all she could think about. ‘Why kill Anna, then? Why not leave her impaired like Katrina?’
‘Because of you.’
‘Me?’
‘Because Madison came to you. Madison fucked it all up. She drank from Anna’s drink and once she’d been to see you, keeping Anna for any longer was too risky. You were now actively searching for her. It was much easier to get rid of her.’
Geneva remembered the photo of Anna spread-eagled on the floor, her dress perfectly arranged. The blood on the wall and the defaced passport. ‘You knew when Anna’s body was found we’d start looking at her life and that eventually we’d come to you, so you staged it to appear like a serial sex slaying. The blood, the positioning, the passport photo – it was all a bluff, wasn’t it?’
‘It’s a shame you didn’t work it out before. But then you were looking for patterns and I provided them – only they happened to be the wrong ones. I knew, once you saw Anna like that, your brains would start to work in one way, you’d see what you were hoping to see and ignore the rest.’
Geneva’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could make him out clearly now, surprised at how slight and unprepossessing he was. The kind of person you could talk to for an hour and instantly forget the moment you got up. ‘My boss suspected all along. He never believed the profile.’
‘Which is why it was lucky you were there to steer him towards it.’
Geneva knew he was trying to goad her but she also knew he was right and that her insistence on a serial pathology, along with Hoffmann’s, had made them blind to certain clues and anomalies that might have led to Bob sooner. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, the drug alive and hectic in her blood. ‘You say you did this to put us off the scent but that’s bullshit – you used the same MO in Bali and you weren’t trying to mislead us then.’
Bob leant forward and brushed his hand against her face. She felt the sting of his fingers and then he changed his mind and pulled his arm back. ‘You still don’t understand, do you? Lucy Brown was my sister. Those girls were never punished for what they did to her.’
Geneva stared mutely at the floor as her brain caught up to the words. It was something they’d not even considered and yet it made perfect sense. ‘So you decided to punish them by recreating the murder scene?’
She heard him suck in a deep draught of air and felt a charge take hold of his body, an unsettling that caused his chair to creak rhythmically against the floor.
‘The Twitter trolling and intrusions? Was that more punishment?’
‘It was justice,’ Bob snapped back, his voice catching on the last syllable. ‘They needed to see what it was like to be bullied, to be picked on and picked apart, how your entire life telescopes down into this one thing. Their parents deserved to suffer the way my mother did. That was only fair.’
‘Fair?’ Geneva said, wondering how many times Bob had watched the footage of Anna’s parents. ‘You’re out of your mind.’
‘And yet look where you are.’
She had no answer for that. Somewhere time was still ticking at its normal pace but down here it had slowed to an almost imperceptible crawl. She knew she had only one card to play and she would have to play it carefully. ‘You’re very good at making up stories. You should have become a proper filmmaker instead of this.’
‘What stories?’
Geneva smiled. ‘The one about Bali, for instance.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘You see, I used to be an English Lit student so I’m very good at pulling stories apart and there’s something about yours that doesn’t add up.’
She saw him flinch and continued. ‘You say you killed Anna and Katrina because of what they did to your sister in Bali. That it was revenge. And I can understand that. Who wouldn’t feel that way? The part that doesn’t make sense to me is you were Lucy’s big brother. You were supposed to be looking after her.’
She heard the faint crack of his teeth grinding against one another, his shoes scraping the floor.
‘This didn’t happen in a split second, Bob. Between Lucy being spiked and her murder there were four hours when you could have saved your sister, and the fact you didn’t makes me wonder.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Makes me wonder if maybe you were somewhere else. Perhaps you met someone and thought you could have the night off from being the ever-present guardian – but no, I don’t think that’s it either. I don’t think you’d neglect your duties and abandon your sister for some girl you’d just met.’
‘I said shut up!’
‘I think you were there. I think you saw it happen. You could have stopped it at any time but you didn’t because you were enjoying it too much.’
‘Shut the fuck up.’ Bob swerved forward and raised his left heel and stamped it down on Geneva’s fingers.
She pushed the pain to the back of her mind and tried to recall more details from Hoffmann’s profile, words the only ammunition she possessed. ‘It’s not easy to care for a mentally disabled sibling, I’m sure. It takes up your entire life. You were probably looking after Lucy from the moment she was born and it’s made you resentful. You can’t keep from imagining what your life would be like without her. All the failures and disappointments you blamed on her, because that’s what we do, isn’t it? Otherwise, we have to accept that our lives are our own fault or that the world is random and capricious. And Lucy was always going to be your burden, you could never be free while she was alive – so, tell me if I’m wrong, but I think a part of you enjoyed what Anna, Katrina and the others were doing to her. After all, you were stuck on this island with all these beautiful girls and wild parties and instead you had to spend every last minute looking after your sister.
‘So, I think you got a kick out of Lucy being humiliated and I can understand that too – we all occasionally have those feelings towards the people we’re tethered to – but what I can’t understand is why you didn’t intervene after they hid her clothes? When she was naked and terrified on the beach? Or why you didn’t stop her when she was wandering around in a daze?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Bob pressed down with his heel and electric arrows shot through Geneva’s fingers.
She bit her tongue and warm blood flooded her mouth. She swallowed it down and continued. It was too late to stop now. ‘The only thing which makes sense is that watching her turned you on. That’s what I get from your online activity and the crime scene. You can cover up a lot of things but your behaviour will always betray your true motivations. You’ve convinced yourself you’re doing this out of revenge but you’re not – you just haven’t realised it yet.’
Geneva stopped, caught her breath, and continued. ‘Watching Lucy awakened something in you. Something that was always there but which you’ve denied and suppressed your entire life. The things you did to Anna – the drugs, the clothes, the positioning – you weren’t avenging Lucy’s death. You were recreating it.’
She paused and waited for a reaction but there was only the sound of his breathing.
‘I bet seeing her body on the beach gave you an unexpected thrill? That’s why you didn’t try to intervene when the migrants took her or call for the cops. Did you hide behind some bushes and film it? Of course you did. I’m sure you’ve replayed the footage countless
times. You saw your sister being taken and you filmed it on your phone and you couldn’t control yourself. Watching her struggle and cry. Knowing you had the power to stop it if you wanted. And when it was over, you went up and closed her eyes. That’s what gave you away. The migrants didn’t care enough about her to do that.’ Geneva forced herself up on one leg, the chair she’d been strapped to taking the weight of her arms. ‘And you know the funniest thing? We might never have caught you if a fifteen-year-old brat hadn’t outwitted you with his Ratting program. That’s how it ends for you, Bob. Pathetic and pointless. It’s time for you to accept the truth of your life. You’ve been lying to yourself for far too long.’
He didn’t respond for almost a full minute then something shifted in his expression. He reached out and gently stroked her hair. ‘It doesn’t matter. Even if you catch me, there’s hundreds of thousands just like me all over the world, cruising the web, looking for prey, and it’s only going to get a whole lot worse. You think the things I’ve done are bad, just wait and see what the next generation is capable of. You’ll have nowhere to hide. You’ll never feel safe again.’
Bob stood up and kicked the chair away. He crouched down beside Geneva and lifted her up by the throat. She felt his fingers pressing down on her windpipe but she didn’t struggle. She knew her one chance would also be her only chance and that it would come in that moment before the end, that precise instant when he lost control. She felt the first tingle of the next wave of drugs coursing through her. The heat radiating off his body. She waited for him to begin but instead he pulled a small silver scalpel from his back pocket.
‘You’re not going to take off your clothes?’ She’d been planning for this, knowing it would be her best and last chance, and she couldn’t hide the disappointment in her voice.
‘That was far more hassle and much less fun than I expected.’ He pushed the blade against her neck. It was all happening too quickly. Geneva’s head snapped back and hit the wall. She felt the icy kiss of metal as he thrust the knife below her jaw and slid it into place. He pressed lightly to test the skin and was about to make his incision when the phone rang.
Bob looked down at his waist in surprise but he recovered quickly, shooting his fist out, the knuckles connecting with Geneva’s forehead and sending her sprawling to the floor. He rubbed his fingers with his other hand and took out his phone. He saw his mother’s name on the caller ID and put the receiver to his mouth. ‘Not now. I’m busy,’ he said, about to hang up.
But the voice on the other end was not Eleanor Harper’s.
53
‘What the fuck are you doing with my mother’s phone?’
Carrigan could hear a strange reverb bleeding from Bob’s voice as if he were speaking underwater. After listening to Eleanor’s story, Carrigan had called Hoffmann. They’d conferred and considered and come to the same conclusion.
‘You need to let DS Miller go. It’s over.’
Bob laughed. ‘It’s not even begun. You think I can’t get away and reach the Continent before you have your warrants and teams set up? There’s four more girls out there who haven’t come to terms with their actions yet. Two in Cologne, one in Bern and another in Belgrade I’m saving for last. You really believe your jurisdiction will stretch that far? In the meantime, DS Miller will spend years trapped down here even if you get her out today.’
‘I understand that, Bob,’ Carrigan replied. ‘But we know where you are. We have the hostel surrounded. You’re not going to get away.’
‘I don’t believe you. There’s no way you could know that.’
‘You’re right. Which is why I had to ask your mother. She told me you like to spend time in the basement of the abandoned section, that it reminds you of your room at home when you were a kid.’
‘She would never have willingly told you that,’ Bob replied, a slight hesitation in his voice. ‘What the fuck did you do to her?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, she’d very much like to speak to you.’
Carrigan handed the phone to Eleanor. She took it mutely, the revelations of the last hour still rattling through her head.
‘Robert? You told me Lucy ran away. You said you tried to find her?’
‘I did it for you.’ There was a long pause, punctuated only by the sound of Bob’s breathing. ‘I was waiting until it was over. I was going to tell you about it then.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You don’t know the things they did to Lucy. How they humiliated her. And they got away with it. That wasn’t fair. It was their fault. They killed her more surely than those migrants did and they were enjoying their lives oblivious to what they’d put you through. It was all for you, Mum – can’t you see that?’
‘Are you out of your mind?’
Geneva tensed her body, waiting for the right moment. Bob kept shaking his head at the phone, ignoring her, his attention completely focused on the conversation, the scalpel dangling from his fist.
‘I remember how happy you were after Dad died. I only wanted you to be happy again.’
‘God, you’re just like him. Your father was a weak man and a bully and so are you. None of this has brought Lucy back. How could it? The only thing it’s done is make me lose you.’
‘What . . . what do you mean? I’m still here.’ His voice trailed off and Geneva noticed the way his posture changed to accommodate the words, the coiled tension in his limbs and wild disturbance in his eyes.
‘No. No, you’re not. I don’t recognise you. The boy I raised would never have done this. All you’ve managed to do is hurt their families the way ours was hurt.’ Eleanor was crying but her voice betrayed no sign of it. ‘Is that what you call fair? I can’t believe that you – of all people – would do such a thing. You know better than anyone what it means to lose someone close. I don’t understand you at all and I’m not sure I can speak to you again. Not after this.’
Eleanor hung up. Static buzzed across the basement. Bob shouted into the receiver, ‘No!’ He lifted the phone up to his face. ‘Mum? Mum? Speak to me. Please.’
Geneva moved quickly, while he was still off-balance. She wrapped her hands around his ankles and pulled. He tried to resist, but gravity was on her side for once and he crashed to the floor in a series of delayed stumbles, the scalpel flying from his hand. Geneva tried to reach for it but he was surprisingly quick, grabbing her by the thigh and squeezing hard. He got to his knees and punched her in the stomach, the air exploding from her lungs, black stars swarming her vision. She tried to shake him off but his grip was too fierce. She pivoted her hips, spun her legs, and went for his head but missed, her fingers snatching at his long black hair instead.
She grasped the hair and wound her fist around it and used it to pull herself up. He screamed and his head jerked back. Geneva twisted the hair tighter, reeling him in. He shot his arm out and punched her in the chest. She held on and pulled until there was no more slack, then rotated her fist and slammed his face into the floor.
Blood streamed from his eyes and nose. He flapped his arms wildly, his legs kicking out underneath him. His fingers grappled and flailed and found her shirt and he began to slowly pull her towards him. She tried to kick him off but she had no leverage. Any moment he would be above her. Her fist was still clutching his hair. She cocked it and twisted his head and brought it down hard on the floor, a sickening crunch filling her ears. All resistance immediately disappeared. His body began to spasm. Geneva uncoiled her fingers and pushed herself away until the cold wall was at her back. She felt light-headed and drugsick, on the verge of passing out.
Bob lifted his head. There was a dent where his skull had caved in. His right eye rolled back into its socket, leaving only a milky blankness. He began to speak but it was in no language she could recognise and she saw the raw panic in his face when he realised what was happening. He tried to reach out for her but lost his balance, his body convulsing one final time before it surrendered to the floor.
&
nbsp; Epilogue
Five days later
‘I’ve made my decision.’
Carrigan sat across from the doctor discussing the thing you hope never to have to discuss. His head swarmed with hesitations, guilt, and the smell of fresh raisin cake. The call had come an hour ago. He’d driven straight to the emergency room. His mother’s heart had stopped during the night. They’d broken two ribs resuscitating her.
‘You tell me she’ll never recover. You say all her brain function is gone and even if she woke up she’d be in a persistent vegetative state. What other option do I have?’
The doctor shrugged, small sloped shoulders caving in towards his chest. A man not given to grave pronouncements spending his life dispensing them. ‘Some people, regardless of the prognosis, choose to have faith we’re wrong.’
‘And are you ever wrong?’
‘Sometimes, yes,’ the doctor admitted. ‘But not in cases like this. The facts I gave you are just that – facts. We’ve scanned her several times and what’s gone isn’t ever coming back, I’m afraid.’
‘What if she’s conscious underneath it all and going out of her mind staring at the ceiling?’
The doctor folded his hands. ‘We still don’t know what happens in the brains of coma patients, no idea how much of the world they can perceive or what’s going on internally. We only have the facts. Without the machines supporting her, she wouldn’t be alive.’
Carrigan rubbed his beard. ‘Does that mean she’s actually dead?’
The doctor thought about this, a frown settling on his face. ‘That’s where definitions tend to get a bit slippery.’
‘Even between life and death?’ Carrigan stared at the back of a picture frame propped up on the desk, wondering if the other side held a wife and family. ‘When can it be done?’
The doctor pulled out a large desk diary and flicked through it, much more comfortable with data and action than abstract speculation. ‘How about later today?’
