Bloodstream

by Luca Veste

  Darren laughed and placed his hands on her shoulders as she opened the door. ‘Let them see. About time they had something to talk about around here.’

  ‘Stai zitto! Be quiet. Just get in, will you.’

  An hour later, lying in bed next to Darren, Rossi could feel her eyes closing. ‘If you don’t want to stay, I suggest going now. I’m going to be asleep any second.’

  ‘I’ll have to go,’ Darren said. ‘I’ve got an early shift in the morning and I don’t want to wake you. Looks like you’re dead on your feet.’

  ‘I am now, thanks to you.’

  Darren touched a palm to his chest. ‘I am honoured to make you feel that way.’

  Rossi sometimes didn’t know if he was joking or being serious. That was the only thing that made her pause. If he was kidding, all was good. If not, then some of the things he said were slightly . . . weird.

  The sex was good though. Very good, she thought. Best she’d had for a long time and that was saying something.

  ‘You’re best going then,’ Rossi said, turning over onto her side. ‘Do us a favour, lock the door on your way out and post the keys.’

  ‘No problem,’ Darren said, sitting on the edge of her bed and pulling on his trousers.

  Rossi was almost asleep when she became aware of him standing over her.

  ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow or something,’ she said, half into the pillow.

  ‘Okay,’ Darren said, leaning down to lay a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Speak later.’

  She was never sure if he was joking or being serious. That’s why she didn’t respond when he stood at her bedroom doorway and whispered, ‘I love you.’

  Rossi let sleep consume her instead.

  * * *

  He saw her car as he pulled into the driveway – she’d parked a bit further down the road, her licence plate briefly illuminated in his headlights. Murphy frowned as he snapped off The Who mid-squeal and got out of the car. He let himself into the house, waiting to hear voices but instead was greeted only by silence.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was a murmur from behind the living-room door as he removed his coat and hung it up. ‘Through here,’ he heard Sarah say.

  Murphy took a deep breath and pushed open the living-room door.

  He was transported back a couple of years, before anything terrible had happened. He would return home to find his wife Sarah taking up one side of the sofa, her legs tucked up underneath her and a glass of wine half full on the small table in front of her, Jess sitting next to her. The sound of laughter and chatter emanating from the room, before he’d even entered. Two, three times a week this would be what greeted him when he came home.

  Now, the scene was similar, but so different in many ways. Sarah was in her usual place, but she was sitting upright, her feet on the floor, a half-empty cup of tea in front of her. Jess was perched next to her, ready to stand up at any second, still wearing her coat.

  ‘Hey,’ Murphy said, not sure what was going on. ‘Everything okay?’ Sarah turned to him with puffy, red eyes. Not a great sign, he thought. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I think you know, David,’ Sarah said, looking away from him. ‘Do you want to tell me what’s been going on?’

  Murphy locked eyes with Jess who returned his stare.

  ‘What’s been going on? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Sit down, David,’ Jess said, her voice calm and so unlike the angry tone he’d received before. ‘Let’s discuss this.’

  Murphy perched on the arm of his chair, trying to run through excuses as to why he hadn’t told Sarah the truth about what was going on. Trying to come up with lies he could tell, just so she wouldn’t think badly of him. But his mind wasn’t playing. Nothing coming to him easily.

  ‘My client, Keith Hudson, called the office this afternoon,’ Jess said, once she’d paused a few seconds to make Murphy sweat more. ‘Said he’d had a visitor to his house.’

  Murphy wanted to scratch his beard, play with an earlobe, anything. Instead, he kept his hands still, clasped together on his lap. ‘Yeah, go on.’

  ‘He said the big detective who had first interviewed him had come to his house, walked inside when he wasn’t invited and then physically threatened him. Pushed him up against a wall and hurt him by grabbing him by the throat.’

  Murphy didn’t say anything, wondering when the actual body blow of Amy Maguire and her mother was going to appear.

  ‘Why would you do that, David?’ Sarah said, sitting forward on the sofa. ‘You could be sacked for something like that.’

  Murphy shook his head. ‘No, that wouldn’t happen.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ Jess said, raising an arched eyebrow. ‘I’ve heard of people getting demoted for much less. You don’t think a detective going round to an innocent man’s house and assaulting him wouldn’t result in a tribunal?’

  ‘Assaulting him?’ Murphy said, standing up and pacing towards the mantelpiece. ‘It wasn’t anything like that. I just thought he had more questions to answer and that’s it. I had a bit of time, so I went over there.’

  ‘Surely you can see that’s not right?’

  ‘Well, if you hadn’t come along, Jess, and stopped him talking, maybe I wouldn’t have had to do that, would I? There’s a poor girl somewhere out there, waiting for someone to help her. What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘You really think Keith Hudson had anything to do with it? You’ve met him, spent time with him. He’s not well, David. It was bloody obvious to me. You’re a detective and you couldn’t work that one out?’

  ‘You can never be too careful.’

  ‘I think in this instance you ought to be,’ Jess said, standing up and pulling her coat tighter across her body. ‘He’s not going to say anything for now, but that’s only because I’ve convinced him not to. But you’ve got to sort yourself out.’

  ‘Thanks, Jess,’ Murphy said, attempting a smile as he gripped hold of the mantelpiece. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for you,’ Jess replied, turning away from him. ‘I did it for Sarah. That’s why she had to know, to make sure you don’t make any more mistakes by hiding things away from her. She doesn’t deserve to go through any of that. She’s done nothing wrong. I won’t do it again, though. Believe me. You mess up again and I won’t be here warning you off.’

  Murphy gazed down at the carpet, the edge of the rug he had never wanted to buy jutting out from underneath the coffee table. ‘Okay.’

  Jess headed for the door, Sarah jumping up as she did so and following her out of the room.

  Murphy considered going after her, making another attempt at reconciliation, but knew it wasn’t worth it. It still wasn’t time.

  He heard the door close and waited with his eyes still down. All thoughts of an early night now washed away as his mind clicked into gear.

  ‘You want to tell me what’s going on?’ Sarah said as she entered the room.

  Murphy lifted his head to look at Sarah, wanting to tell her so much. Everything that had happened in the previous few days. Why he was becoming slowly obsessed with the case of a missing girl he knew wasn’t anything to do with him.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, putting one foot in front of the other and walking past her. ‘Just work stuff. There’s nothing to worry about. Just went a little bit too Gene Hunt, that’s all. Won’t happen again.’

  He watched as Sarah took in what he said, waiting for her not to accept the lie. A look passed over her face, gone in an instant.

  ‘Okay, fine. I’ve missed you today.’

  Murphy smiled, glad the conversation was over. ‘Well, I’m home now.’

  Part Three

  Will and Carly

  There was a time when Will hadn’t hated Carly. There must have been. A time when all he felt for her was love and nothing else. Now, he was used to her. He knew his life wouldn’t be the same without her, but the love he’d originally felt was gone. He was stuck with her. That was
all.

  They had met at fifteen, when all he’d wanted to do was finally lose his virginity. To anyone, at that point. It didn’t matter. All his mates had shagged someone, so it was his turn.

  Carly just happened to be that someone.

  Once that was out the way, they’d fallen into a relationship. It was just how things went. One day, Carly was some girl in his year at school, with tits bigger than most of the other girls’. Not one of the nicest looking in the year, but he had spent a few weeks chasing after her anyway. They’d finally had sex on the living-room floor of her auntie’s house whilst Carly was meant to be babysitting.

  Both of them couldn’t wait to leave school, as if they had something to look forward to after it. They’d worked a few different jobs, leeched off parents for a bit, then moved in together. It seemed the done thing.

  It hadn’t taken long for Will to cheat for the first time. Since then, he’d lost count of how many other girls he’d been with. He’d grown into adulthood, looking better than Carly would have normally deserved, he thought. He knew he was out of her league, but that was just the way things went. She had problems keeping her weight down – he had problems keeping track of who he was fucking that weekend. Now, she was in bed early every night. Watching the same shit programmes on TV, then yawning and going off upstairs, leaving him to it. Making him smoke outside, rather than inside where he should have been able to.

  He stepped out onto the step. It was pitch black out there; no neighbouring houses had their back lights on. He’d installed a light a year before, which turned on when something moved, but the bulb needed replacing. Another job he couldn’t be arsed sorting.

  ‘Night then,’ Carly said from the kitchen door. ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah, night, babe,’ Will said, closing the door a little more behind him. ‘Fucking bitch,’ he then muttered under his breath. They’d argued again, her wanting to go out and see that sister of hers. He knew she only went round there to complain about him. She’d given up eventually, knowing she wouldn’t win the argument.

  He waited a few seconds, lit a cigarette, and then pulled his phone out. It was permanently in his pocket, so there was no chance of Carly finding anything on it. He always had to text first. Those were the rules.

  The red glow from the end of his cigarette illuminated the smoke as it drifted away into the dark sky. He took another drag and started messaging the other girl in his life. The new one.

  The only light in the yard was from his phone as his thumb danced across the screen. He got an instant response, smiled and messaged back. It wouldn’t be long until the pictures started coming. He could already feel himself stirring at the thought of what he would soon see. What he could get her to send him.

  He loved modern technology.

  He sent another message, then locked the phone and put it back in his pocket. He threw the cigarette down and watched it float away. Then looked up.

  Two eyes from behind a ski mask looked back at him.

  * * *

  There was a knife to his throat. The blade pressed against his skin, sharp and painful even without it piercing his neck. His breathing had slowed to an almost imperceptible amount, his fear of moving even an inch taking over. There was a smell above him, sweat and fast food. A hand was on his opposite shoulder to the knife, pressing into him, fingers digging into flesh.

  ‘You can’t forgive him, can you?’

  The voice was hard, gritty. Spoken through clenched teeth, spittle flying onto the dining-room floor.

  ‘He has lied and lied and there’s nothing he can say to make that better. I can’t help you, can I?’

  Will knew who the man was, and what he had done. It was the talk of the city, so it wasn’t as if he could have missed it. Everyone was talking about what had happened to ChloJoe, then that second couple. Then there was that couple from the Wirral.

  And now them. Him and Carly were next.

  A blade against his throat.

  He was going to die, and it wasn’t right.

  * * *

  Carly knew Will cheated on her. Well, knew as in suspected strongly. There were things that didn’t add up, things he said and things he did. Sometimes you just know. That was why she didn’t feel any guilt over what she had done with Adam. She wondered then if he was the man behind the mask, but only for a second. The body shape was wrong, the height different. The smell of his aftershave wasn’t the same.

  She had listened as Will was forced to confess what he’d been up to. Heard the stories of other women and what he had done. She wondered why she didn’t feel anything. No hurt, no betrayal. Just a nothingness.

  There was no love between them.

  She thought there had been, back at the beginning. She had thought there was something special about meeting one another at such a young age, then staying together for all that time. Despite all the things people had said to her over the years, how it would never last, how they would eventually want something else, they had stayed the course. They had just gone on and on. Stuck with each other.

  Carly had been scared about what single life would actually be like. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t had someone at home, late at night. She was never alone. Not really. It didn’t matter that she knew he no longer fancied her, never mind loved her. He preferred a skinny, platinum blonde on his arm, not the size twelve-fourteen she was, dark roots showing through her badly dyed hair.

  She knew she was attractive, just not to Will any more. Yet, she couldn’t make the break. Couldn’t make the change she needed to.

  Strapped to the chair, she knew she should have made different choices. Tried to do something other than settle. She should have allowed this relationship to fester and die.

  Stubbornness had overruled self-preservation. She could have been happier. She could have had a better life than the one she’d settled for. That’s what she thought now.

  Now.

  Now, all she could do was sit and watch as a man dressed in black began to cut into Will’s throat with a sharp blade.

  * * *

  This wasn’t love.

  There was something there, he thought. Something underneath the surface. They weren’t begging for their lives like the others had. They just sat there, waiting. They knew who he was, what he had come to do. They weren’t prepared to fight for themselves or each other.

  He didn’t understand it.

  He had waited a day, after driving to the house the night before and deciding against doing anything so rash as not planning it further. It was now Thursday night, only two days on from Greg and Hannah. Six days after Chloe and Joe.

  He could feel sweat gathering underneath the ski mask, the heat under his dark clothes increasing by the second. He blinked away moisture, held the blade in trembling hands and prepared to begin.

  ‘Finding you didn’t take long. Although being given your address was a nice head start. See, someone wanted me to come here.’

  He looked from face to face. ‘I went online and trawled through what info I could find on you both. Facebook, etcetera. Yours was private, wasn’t it, Carly?’

  He traced a finger across her face, enjoying the flinch she gave in response. ‘Could only see your profile picture and that was it. Will’s, on the other hand, is open and easy to look at.’

  He crouched in front of Carly, staring into her blue-green eyes and then giving her a wink. ‘You know, when I first started out doing this, I would spend hours following people around, learning as much as I possibly could about them. The first couple I had in chairs facing each other, I didn’t have the luxury of being told what they had done. I had to find information on them first. On him. I knew he had been lying but I wasn’t sure what it was about.’

  He crossed the room and rested an elbow on Will’s head, facing Carly. Will bucked underneath his weight, so he pressed harder.

  ‘I became a third member of that relationship, without them even realising it. I was a part of them. I hear
d conversations they had, listening for something underneath the surface. I wanted to find out if the lie was already known, if it was no longer hidden. They’re no longer with us, so I think you can guess at the answer to that. She knew at the end. I made sure of that.’

  He grabbed Will’s jaw, forcing him to look up, and Will screamed behind the tape across his mouth.

  ‘You’re a bit of a fool, Will. An idiot. I sent you a friend request but it was a fake profile. You accepted instantly. All I needed was a few pictures of a blonde hairdresser, which I plucked from another profile. It’s easy enough to do. Do you remember the message you sent her?’

  He tightened his grip on Will’s jaw. ‘Naughty, naughty boy, Will.’

  He forced Will’s head back even further, before letting go and giggling to himself as he crossed back to Carly.

  ‘I wanted to find out as much as possible about you both, before it became time for me to show myself. I wanted to understand you and become a part of your lives. You look less plastic in real life, Carly. And are you really a Man United fan, Will? You’re brave, being that in this city. Although, I do know you weren’t born in Liverpool, so that probably explains it.’

  He moved to the side, facing both of them.

  ‘I read through all your posts, Will. All your laddish bullshit, your right-wing idiocy. The way you talk about women, like they’re objects. Quite the catch you have here, Carly.’

  He studied her once more, trying to see what was behind those eyes.

  ‘I don’t understand you, Carly. Why do you allow him to treat you this way? People notice, you know. They must wonder how he gets away with it. You didn’t accept my request, so I don’t know much of anything about you. I bet you dote on him though. That’s what I think. There to answer to his every beck and call. Dye job, and tan from a bottle. All to make him happy, I bet. But it makes no difference, does it? You mould yourself to be better for him, to make him happy, yet nothing changes.’

  He stared at Carly, waiting for a response, but received nothing. As Will bucked in his chair and shouted behind his tape, Carly remained stock still. It was as if she were watching something being acted out in front of her, rather than being a part of it.