It would be like all her dreams had come true.
Her phone beeped and she checked the text message. It was from Ben.
‘Finished with the police, all ok. Am staying at Mum’s as she has had another turn. Sweet dreams, you two x.’
Natalie used the time alone to relax and calm herself down after the incident. She poured a glass of white wine from an already opened bottle in the fridge, gulped it down, sat on the sofa and masturbated.
36
Eve hadn't answered Ben's calls so he had gone to her apartment. He rang her door bell to no avail, and found himself calling up to her window. The light was on, so he suspected she was in, maybe asleep. Finally, there was some movement of the curtain covering the front window.
A sleepy Eve opened the window and stuck her head out to see what the fuss was about and a huge smile appeared on her face when she saw her new lover, stood below and lit up by the street light.
‘Are you coming up?’ she called down.
Ben sighed.
‘Just for a minute,’ he replied.
Eve buzzed him into the building and opened the door to her apartment, then sat back down on the bed, turning off the television which had been idly showing the menu screen of the film she had watched.
Ben entered the apartment and closed the door behind him. Eve sensed seriousness in Ben, and it instantly made her feel uncomfortable. He edged his way towards her and sat down beside her on the bed. She leant in to kiss him, but he held up his hand to stop her advance.
‘What's going on?’ she asked, fearing the worst.
Ben gulped, closed his eyes and prepared to say the words he didn't want to cross his lips.
‘You know I like you, Eve. It's been about a day that I've known you and I think I may even love you,’ he said.
She smiled.
‘But, I met you at the wrong time in my life,’ he continued. ‘I wish we’d met a couple of months ago, even just a week ago.’
‘Ben, we discussed this,’ she said. ‘We can get through your problems, and my problems, we'll take on the world together.’
‘I'm going to help you get your life on track,’ he said. ‘I want you to go back to university, or at least find the thing that you are most passionate about, and don't let go of it.’
‘That's you,’ she said. ‘It's you I've been waiting for.’
Ben stood and walked to the door, he held the handle.
‘You won't see me again,’ he said, sadly. ‘I can't explain why right now, but I wish you all the luck in the world, my darling.’
‘What?’ she yelled.
Eve marched over to Ben and they stood face to face.
‘You're really gonna give this up? After one day?’ she screamed. ‘You can't see how special this is? How special you are to me? How good I could be for you?’
Tears welled up in Ben's eyes.
‘Then fuck you!’ said Eve, as she swung her knee forward and caught Ben in his groin area, sending him crouching down in agony.
‘You hurt me,’ he wailed.
‘You met me in anger management, Ben,’ she said sharply, just millimetres from his ear, before opening the door and shoving him out.
Eve slammed the door shut and threw herself onto the bed, tears flowing freely, as Ben staggered onto the street outside, the pain in his groin slowly subsiding.
He was a long walk from his mother's house, but they needed to talk, so he began the journey.
37
Neighbours had gathered around the cordoned off driveway, bright police lights had attracted them like moths to a candle.
Summers examined the body whilst Kite was inside the house, along with a female officer, trying to calm down the distraught Tanya.
There were two explanations that rattled around Summers’ head.
Firstly, The Phantom had killed David Reynolds, using his typical methods and disappearing into nothingness, as he always did, and as per usual, leaving no trace of his ever being there, except the mutilated body leaking blood everywhere. The problem with this theory, was that the frequency of The Phantoms killing had shot up from around two a year to two a day. Certainly not an improvement to the situation, although, the more murders committed at a higher pace could, in theory, lead to a mistake being made on The Phantoms part. That was the only silver lining she could think of.
Secondly, there was more than one killer. Was there a copycat? Or maybe The Phantom was in cahoots with someone else? Maybe it was The Phantoms they should be looking for.
The corpse that lay in front of her certainly looked like a victim to The Phantom to the untrained eye. It wasn’t a robbery, as David still wore an expensive watch that he must’ve forgotten to take off before his run. It was also unlikely to be an argument, as none of the neighbours so eager to be involved by attending the crime scene had heard or seen a commotion of any sort, not this evening or any evening involving David or Tanya in the time they had lived there.
But, his throat was sliced, this was new. And although The Phantom did sometimes stray from his preferred methods of killing, using a screwdriver instead of a knife for example, this didn’t sit right with the detective. But then, if it was an accomplice and not a copycat, this wouldn’t have happened either.
So could it be a copycat? What were the chances?
The murders had been on the television and in the newspapers, on and off, for years now. Obviously the last couple of days this had turned into full blown coverage again, and it was hard to not know all about The Phantom and his unfortunate victims. If somebody felt the urge to murder, would using the techniques that they had likely read or heard about in the last couple of days be the preferred method? It had worked wonders for The Phantom, after all.
Summers concluded that if it was a copycat killer, there was a good chance that the forensic team would find evidence of some sort, as not everybody could be as careful as The Phantom, not in the heat of battle, when the blood is pumping or the mind is racing and a major crime is being carried out.
Kite walked out of the house and informed his boss that neither he nor the female officer could get much out of Mrs Reynolds for the time being. They had agreed that Tanya be escorted to a cousin’s house on the edge of the city then collected in the morning and brought to the station for a formal interview.
Kite added that the heavily pregnant and hysterically upset Tanya, in his opinion, could not and would not have been responsible for the death of her husband. Summers took his word for it, for now, although she would make her own mind up tomorrow at the station.
Finally forensics arrived.
The first thing they did was erect a large, white tent and try to stop the area being contaminated any further than it already had been, also so they could get on peacefully with their work without being hounded by the public or the press who were bound to arrive shortly.
Summers noticed she had a touch of blood on her shoe and slowly moved away from the head of forensics, who would quite rightly give her a good telling off for potentially contaminating the crime scene.
As per usual, there were no witnesses to offer any useful information to the investigators, and no cameras on the residential street meant that there wasn’t much point in the detectives hanging around.
It had been a long day, so Kite drove Summers home, before retiring for the night himself.
38
Ben sat at the kitchen table, drinking out of the wine glass his mother had poured for herself before evidently passing out. She was sat on the chair opposite him, her arms and head rested on the hard wood table, unconscious from the alcohol.
He'd been crying again, over the situation he found himself in, the loss of what once seemed to be a bright future. And he cried over pain he now felt in his heart, the heavy ache he carried in his chest since leaving Eve's apartment. He'd never believed in love at first sight, thinking it was only ever lust that could grab somebody's attention that quickly, but now he wasn't so sure.
Was twenty-four hou
rs enough to fall in love? It was for Ben, he believed that now. And it was real love, the kind of love where you would sacrifice for that person to do the right thing, even if it meant breaking the two hearts that until that moment had bonded as one.
He'd also cried over the ever-increasingly complicated relationship between him and his mother.
For years she'd had problems, mental problems, she'd been prescribed all sorts of medication to balance herself out, but hadn't taken the pills as routinely as needed, even with her husband placing the pills and a glass of water beside her bed in the morning, and next to her dinner plate in the afternoon. Was she deliberately disobedient? She started refusing the treatment altogether.
It was almost as if someone was telling her not to take the medication. On one occasion, Mr Green found around a month's worth of pills under his wife's side of the bed, which led to him to try and force the tablets into her, which led to physical struggles, which Ben once saw.
There is nothing quite as sickening to a child, regardless of age, as witnessing the two people you love and care for more than anyone else, fighting and shouting and screaming at each other, and then seeing your mother forcing herself to throw up, if your father was lucky enough to get her to take her medication in the first place.
She should have been in a home for the mentally ill a long time ago, but Mr Green was old school, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Looking back, Ben could now see that this was a mistake on his father's part.
Was it his only mistake?
Ben had moments when he believed in the awful words his mother had mumbled to him in the last day or so, the fact that his father had been a serial killer, that he carried the same murderous gene that his father had, and that he could only fight his natural instincts for so long before they took over.
Why did his mother have to tell him that? Why couldn't she leave Ben to believe that his father was a saint? Just let him think his father was a great man who loved and cared and gave and shared.
Why did she have to break Ben's heart again? Why?
Ben felt a rage build in his body and before he knew it, he'd smashed his fist down hard onto the kitchen table, his mother's head bounced up from the surface from the impact. She awoke from her alcohol-induced slumber and smiled as she stared bleary-eyed at her son, as she sat back in her seat and looked for her glass of wine before realising it was in Ben's hand.
‘So, Charlie's dead,’ said Ben, staring into his mother's eyes, searching for a reaction, a sign of how much she knew, how much she understood or cared about the torment he was going through.
‘You did well, my son.’ she replied. ‘Yes, I heard it on the radio. How do you feel?’
‘How do I feel?’ said Ben, ‘I didn't do it. The police had me in the station for a murder I didn't commit. Thank god they're so stupid they didn't realise I'm the bastard who killed those fucking kids!’
Ben leaned in towards the table, finished the glass of wine and poured some more.
‘Of course you killed him, Ben,’ said his mother, ‘who else?’
‘I bottled it, mum,’ he said. ‘I couldn't go through with it. I ran away. Then the next thing, four policemen are at my front door, asking me to the station to answer some questions.’
Mrs Green held out her hand and Ben gave her the wine glass.
‘Your father used to forget as well, Ben,’ she said, before taking a large gulp of the red wine. ‘He would sometimes wake up, specks of blood on his face and in his hair, and deny he'd done anything wrong. He denied it so much. I could only believe that he didn't know what he had done, like he'd chosen to forget.’
She emptied the wine glass with another large gulp, slid it along the table to Ben, who filled it again.
‘He chose to forget?’ said Ben. ‘You can't just forget these things, mum, not even you with your unstable mind and fucking drinking problem.’
Ben swiped his arm across the table and the glass flew into the wall to his left, broken glass crashed to the floor and wine ran down the wall.
His mother didn't flinch.
‘Now, now, Ben,’ she said, ‘calm down. This is not the moment to panic. Your mind lets you forget what you have done because you are not ready to accept what you are, not yet. It will come. For now, your mind is protecting you, hiding your ills deep down, and we'll wait, we'll wait until you're ready.’
It was at this point, Ben realised how much he hated his mother. He hated looking at her, he hated the sound of her voice, but more than that, he hated the awful words that she spoke. She spoke them like the truth, and Ben didn't know if she was lying, and exploiting his instability to fulfil some bizarre fantasy she had turning around in her sick head, or if she was telling the truth, that not only was he a cold-blooded killer, but his mind was also playing incredible tricks on him.
Sometimes when you hate someone, you don't want to believe what they are saying is the truth, even if you haven't an argument against it.
Mrs Green was now telling Ben how she first discovered that his father was The Phantom. There was the stress and the anger, things that Ben never saw in his father, then his late night walks and coming home late at night and crying himself to sleep on the sofa, thinking that his troubled wife upstairs couldn't hear.
She explained that she took some of the blame, for being such an exhausting wife, that her illness affected the people around her, she knew that, but ultimately, it was Ben's father who had this desire inside him, the need to shed the blood of another to ease the pain and torture inside of him.
Eventually, at a time of weakness for Mr Green, she approached him and told him that she knew what he had been doing, he broke down in tears, she swore to secrecy, and together they'd get through it.
He’d explained he did it to quieten the voice in his head, how he’d put on some of his painting overalls, take a knife and stalk the streets, keeping to the shadows until he found a victim, someone on their own, someone who wasn’t ready to defend themselves, then he’d claim them as his own, sacrificing them, in the hope that their death would buy him peace of mind.
‘I pledged my allegiance to my husband, like I’m doing to you now.
Ben despised every single word she said. How could he not know the evil that lived inside his father? It seemed impossible. He was the kindest, gentlest man. But then, until recently, so was Ben.
He'd had enough for one day.
He picked himself up and walked around the table, kissed his mother on her cheek then retired to his old bedroom. He took the mirror from his bedroom wall, placed it face down on the floor, and slid it under the bed, then lay himself down with his eyes wide open and let the thoughts run wild through his head.
For the time being, Ben still had control of his mind for fairly long periods, and he needed to make the most of his sanity.
39
It was morning, Ben had collected Natalie from home and they had driven into town. He was going to see the solicitor to fill out any necessary forms and collect the inheritance from his father.
Natalie said she wanted to look at baby clothes and maybe pick out an outfit for their wedding, which she had decided should take place at a registry office. Waiting for a decent church could take too long, and neither of them came from large families and they weren’t religious, so she reasoned it was the better option.
Ben accepted her plans with a nod and dropped her off by the high street before driving five minutes up the road, closer to the solicitor's office.
Natalie grabbed a few items of baby clothes from the first shop she went to, not much heart-felt consideration went into her purchases, just enough care to make it seem she cared. She bought whites and yellows, colours that would suit either a boy or a girl, because clearly, she didn't yet know what sex her fictitious baby would turn out to be.
As she came out of the shop she looked both ways along the street, searching for the real reason she had come into town today, a pharmacy.
Before entering, she took a de
ep breath, closed her eyes and took a moment to get into character.
Inside the store, she saw two of the three employees were available and decided which would be better suited to answer the questions she had. She ignored the older man, and opted for the younger woman, maybe in her late twenties and wearing some nice make-up, Natalie knew that she could relate to her.
She told the pharmacist that she had a friend, who thinks that she may have had a miscarriage, as she had a little bleeding in her underwear.
‘Is that likely to be a miscarriage?’ she asked. ‘What other signs would there be?’
The smile disappeared from the young pharmacists face, and turned into a face of concern.
She explained that bleeding could be a sign of miscarriage, or spontaneous abortion (SAB), but that a little bleeding happened in around one in four pregnancies. If the bleeding were to arrive and then be followed by abdominal pain, lower back pain or pelvic pressure, these were signs that her friend should be wary of. The best thing would be for her friend to see her practitioner, who would organise an ultrasound to see what’s going on inside.
On the surface, Natalie still paid attention to the helpful woman, but inside her head were just a few words going round and round.
'Bleeding, abdominal pain, lower back pain, pelvic pressure, bleeding, abdominal pain...'
Natalie checked her watch and acted alarmed.
‘I'm so sorry,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m going to be late for an appointment, thank you so much for your help. Have a good day.’
She turned and exited the pharmacy, happy that she had the information she'd been looking for.
Ben sat in the swanky office of his father’s solicitor. He finished the coffee the secretary had made for him and placed the cup back onto the saucer.
The house, along with a smaller amount of money had been left directly to Mrs Green, it should eventually be sold, with the proceeds to fund her stay in a good care home, which was for Ben to organise, explained the solicitor, as per his father’s wishes.
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