Hard Truth

by Jay Gill

  “Are you still at home, darlin’?”

  “Yeah.” He laughed it off. “Getting my own place soon as I can get the deposit together. Been doing double shifts at my shitty job. Working weekends too.”

  “You don’t need to tell me. I know how difficult it can be. I bet your mum looks after you really well, doesn’t she? A sweet boy like you.”

  Nunn wanted to change the subject.

  “I . . . I haven’t done this before. This is my first time. With anyone. It’s my birthday today, you see. I’m…” He hesitated, embarrassed to say it out loud, but he liked her, so he continued. “Thirty.”

  He’d spent quite some time studying her profile online before choosing her. He knew what she was. His mum called them ‘tarts’ and ‘whores.’ Then again, she insisted any woman in a short skirt or low top was flaunting it. She’d say, ‘Stay well clear of women like that. You get mixed up with a tart like that, she’ll get herself knocked up. You won’t even know if it’s yours. She’ll demand child support, then she’ll be off with the next fella she meets with more money or a fancy car. I’ve seen it happen time and again. You’ll find a nice girl. Be patient.’ He’d waited. And now, on his thirtieth birthday, he was in a car with Jo-Jo Rox.

  He was a pragmatist. He knew Jo-Jo Rox was being nice for his money and hoping he might become a regular. Which he might if it all went well. She was a bit older than him, mid-forties at a guess, but that was okay. She was very attractive, and he didn’t want anyone his own age or younger. That would feel wrong. No, she was just right. Just how he’d imagined. Her lips were glossy with lipstick. Her nails were painted, and her hands looked soft. He glanced at her breasts. He swallowed hard, and his breathing became jerky as he exhaled. He hoped it wouldn’t be over too quickly. That would be embarrassing.

  “First things first,” Jo-Jo said. She put out her hand.

  “I’m sorry. Yes, of course.”

  He got out the money, and she tucked it into her purse.

  “Thank you. Now, no funny business. We discussed earlier what I will and won’t do within your budget.” Jo-Jo winked at him. “Look, it’s your first time, and it’s your birthday, so perhaps I could throw in a little extra. Something I save for my regulars. How does that sound?”

  Lee nodded. He didn’t know what that might be, but he wasn’t going to refuse.

  “Don’t look so nervous. We’re going to have fun – I promise.”

  His chest was pounding so hard and his head was spinning so fast now he wasn’t sure he’d heard what she said. He smiled and nodded again.

  “How about you unzip yourself and pull down your trousers and undies for me. Get yourself comfortable. I’ll find us some protection. Don’t be shy, handsome. It’s why we’re here.”

  While Jo-Jo rooted around in her purse, Lee did as he was told. He pushed his seat back and reclined it.

  “Is Jo-Jo Rox your real name?” asked Lee.

  She laughed sweetly. “That’s my working name. We all have working names. It’s sexier than my real name. Do you like it?”

  Lee nodded.

  “Having a street name or online name – I do a lot of online work for fans as well now – keeps us safe from the nutters too. You wouldn’t believe the nutters you meet doing this job.”

  Nunn thought that perhaps he would.

  Jo-Jo unwrapped the condom then leaned over and rolled it on. “Lovely. We’re good to go. I’ll let you in on a little secret. My real name is Kelly, but I prefer it if you call me Roxy or Jo-Jo. Are you ready?”

  Lee groaned as Jo-Jo used her mouth on him. He thought he might be in love. He was definitely in love. He loved her.

  Jo-Jo reached back for the scissors she had in her purse. Opening the blades, she lifted her head and said, “Everything okay, Lee?”

  “Uh-huh. Don’t stop. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. You’re amazing.” Lee pushed back in his seat, his eyes tight shut. This was the best birthday ever.

  “That’s what I like to hear. Lyle.”

  “What’s that?” said Lee.

  “My real name. Kelly Lyle.”

  “I like that name. It’s nice,” said Lee. His eyes were shut tight. At this moment in time, he didn’t care what the hell her name was. She could call herself whatever she wanted. All he could think was he didn’t want her to stop.

  Jo-Jo brought the scissors up close, the blades wide open. She took a firm grip of Lee again. He moaned with pleasure. She held him steady and with only three strokes cut his penis clean off.

  Unsure what had happened Lee opened his eyes and looked at Jo-Jo. He was hurting. Something wasn’t right. In the darkness of the car, he couldn’t see the blood; he only felt its warmth as it flowed between his legs. Lee flicked on the car’s internal light. There was blood on him and on her hands.

  “What happened? Are you okay? Is it me?” Lee checked himself. His brain was confused. He caught a glimpse of the scissors. “What did you do?” he demanded.

  Kelly (Jo-Jo Rox) Lyle opened her hand and showed him what she’d cut off. She showed him the scissors. “Snip-snip, snip-snip.”

  Kelly Lyle drove the scissors deep into Lee Nunn’s neck. She did it again and again and again. Savage repeated thrusts. Finally, she pressed the scissors deep into his left eye, where she left them.

  “Sorry, Lee, you picked the wrong woman tonight. I’m not sure how your family are going to react when they hear the circumstances surrounding your death. It’s going to be embarrassing, to say the least.”

  Lee was grasping at his throat. He tried to speak but only managed a deep, guttural choking sound. He kicked out at her in anger. His hand reached for the door handle. The door swung open, and he fell out onto the pavement. He tried to crawl away, but his foot was trapped behind the hinge of the door. He didn’t have the strength to move it.

  Kelly walked around the car and leaned over him. The moonlight lit up his face, the scissors protruding from his eye socket. “That looks painful. Does it sting? I’m going to leave you shortly. You’ve got to admit it was fun while it lasted. Anyway, I’ll post your dick to your mother. I’ll make sure she gets it the day after your funeral. Just when she thinks things can’t get any worse, she’ll get your manhood in the post.” She held up a clear zip-seal bag holding his penis. “I’ll include a note from yours truly telling her all about tonight.”

  Lee spluttered. His lungs gasped for air and his one eye stared.

  “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when she realises the rest of you has been buried, and now she’s got to decide what to do with this little dinky of yours.”

  Lee’s efforts to get to safety stopped. Fighting for breath through all the blood was his only concern. The blood looked black in the moonlight.

  Lee put out his hand to Lyle. He tried to say Help. Kelly crouched down beside him and watched him drift away.

  She stayed with Lee until it was finally over. She checked his pulse. Nothing.

  Lyle said, “Goodbye, Lee. We had fun, didn’t we? Happy birthday.”

  Lyle looked up at the moon and the stars. She looked around and regretted picking this spot for the death of Lee Nunn. It would have been interesting to come back and observe the crime scene when DI Cotton and friends were doing their thing, but this spot would not allow her to observe from afar without being noticed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Emma’s mobile phone buzzed and its face shone bright. She reached out in the darkness and knocked the phone on to the floor. She scooted around and reached down. Still leaning over the side of the bed, she looked at the message. It was from Dave. It said, ‘Can we talk? Soon.’ No kiss, she noted.

  She guessed he was ready to collect his stuff. He could wait. She didn’t reply to the message. They were over, and she was okay about it. Probably for the best. Probably. She rolled into the centre of the bed and pulled the duvet over her head. She tried to sleep. After forty minutes of tossing and turning, she dressed and went for a run.

  After showerin
g, Emma put on her dressing gown and stood by the oven waiting for croissants to warm. Watson padded over. He rubbed himself against her leg.

  “Hello, boy. Do you want some breakfast? Here you go.” Cotton put some foul-smelling canned fish down for him. “Yum.”

  Watson seemed to like it.

  “It’s just you and me now. We’ll be okay, won’t we? How are you doing with the ladies? Any romance you want to tell me about? I bet you love ’em and leave ’em, don’t you?”

  Emma’s phone beeped and so did the oven. She pulled the croissants out and checked the phone message at the same time.

  “We’re going to have to pick this conversation up again later. I’ve got to go.” She continued in a Sherlock Holmes voice, “Seems there’s been a murder, Watson. Prepare the carriage. We leave at once.”

  Watson ignored her and licked his paw.

  “Christ, I’m already trying to joke with the cat. I need to get out more.”

  Thirty minutes later, Emma stood beside the police cordon and could see the victim’s car. It was parked a few hundred yards away, and she could see the driver’s door was open.

  Emma looked up and down the closed road. High up on her left, hotels loomed, their windows looking blankly onto the scene below. To her right was a fenced-off clifftop, the fence punctuated by entrances to steep, winding steps leading to the promenade and beach below. A footpath ran behind the fence, parallel to the cliff’s edge. An empty wooden bench sat high above the ocean, where an early morning mist hung over the water. The mist would burn away as the sun rose higher in the sky.

  “How long until we can get the area completely sealed off? I can see the body from here.”

  The fresh-faced officer looked nervous. “They’ll be here any second, Ma’am. I’ve kept everyone as far back as I can. It’s not ideal, I know.”

  “Okay, okay. Well done.”

  Emma recognised the quiet clifftop as somewhere youngsters came for some privacy. At night the road wasn’t busy. If they’d been drinking and having a good time in Bournemouth town, it was just a short drive. Emma started walking towards the scene.

  “It’s really bad,” the officer called after her.

  Emma put a hand up to indicate she’d heard him.

  An hour later Emma pulled out her mobile phone and hit speed dial. Hardy answered, his voice croaky and tired-sounding. She’d woken him up.

  “We have another one,” she told him. “I’ve just arrived. It’s fresh. It’s really nasty.” Emma glanced inside the car at the objects arranged on the dashboard. “There’s an envelope with your name on it. Literally, your name is written on the front. You want to take a look?”

  Emma waited for Hardy to say something. He didn’t.

  “You’ve been temporarily reinstated. The paperwork just needs your signature. I can give it to you when you get here.”

  There was silence for a moment, then whispering. She guessed he was talking to Monica.

  “Where are you?”

  He didn’t sound happy. So what? This was as much his case as hers.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Excuse me. I need to get through.” I pushed past onlookers, their excited whispers at odds with the grisly scene only a few hundred metres away.

  The road was cordoned off, and the area was buzzing when I arrived. I turned my back on the media. A cameraman I recognised spotted me and nudged a colleague who was on the phone.

  Crap.

  I introduced myself to a young constable. He knew who I was and that I was expected. I made the long walk to the victim’s car.

  Cotton was crouching down next to the victim when I arrived.

  “Sorry to call you,” she said.

  “No, you’re not.” I crouched down beside her.

  Cotton said warmly, “You’re right. I’m not.” Then more seriously, “This is Lee Nunn. Killed less than seven hours ago. As you can see, it’s a mess. There’s blood everywhere. Inside the car is just as bad. Looks like he dragged himself out of the car for some reason.”

  “You think Lyle did this?”

  Cotton tied her hair back into a ponytail. “Yes. At the moment I’m thinking she ticks all the boxes.”

  I glanced inside the car and could see the driver’s seat was soaked in blood and there was arterial spray over the dashboard and windscreen. The pavement where he lay was worse still.

  Looking at the bloody, lifeless body of Nunn I was shocked by the savagery. Why had she mutilated him in that way? I’d not known her to do that before.

  I shook my head and said, “This is what you see when the perp is angry or has a blood-lust.”

  “She will have got blood all over her in this confined space,” said Cotton. “It’s like she didn’t care.”

  “This is more brutal than the others.”

  “I agree. It was also riskier. There could easily have been a passerby, either in a car or on foot – like a late-night dog-walker. There was any number of ways this could have gone wrong.”

  “Lyle is brutal, yes. She’s also usually clinical in her execution.”

  It seemed an odd thing to think, but I could see no finesse. There also appeared to be a lack of forethought.

  “This road,” I said to Cotton. “Just the one way in and one way out?”

  Cotton nodded.

  “Any security camera on those hotels?”

  “We’re looking into it.”

  I walked around the car. All the doors except his were closed. His foot was trapped in the hinge of the door.

  “The attack happened inside the car. It looks like Nunn tried to crawl away. That would indicate either he met someone here and they got into the car, or he brought them here. Has anyone spoken to his family? He might have told them who he was meeting. Check his phone. Check his computer. Speak to his family. Speak to work colleagues. There is a possibility he told someone who he was meeting. I want to know all his movements.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I was feeling like I’d never been away. I was back. Cotton was smiling.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I guessed she was feeling pleased with herself for bringing me out of retirement. I didn’t care. I was where I belonged. I was going to stop the monster that had done this.

  “You mentioned a note. What about a Scrabble piece? Anything else that indicates Lyle did this?”

  Cotton took out her phone and said, “Forensics have it all. They didn’t want it getting contaminated. Here – I took photos. Lyle left another piece. The letter ‘R’ this time.”

  I read the note a couple of times and then looked at the seemingly ordinary Scrabble piece. “Okay, I don’t need to see any more.”

  Cotton held up her hand and waved her fingers, and the team came over to start the process of moving the body.

  My mind was racing with questions. I didn’t like the way this killing had escalated. There was no subtlety to it. It didn’t feel like Lyle had done it, though I had no doubt she had. I was lost in my thoughts and didn’t hear Cotton calling me.

  “Hey, hey, Hardy. You saw that she cut his dick off, right? They thought it might have been under his body. They just lifted him, and it’s not there. Would she have taken it as a trophy? I know you mentioned she took trophies before.”

  “Souvenirs. They were more like souvenirs. It was thought she took them as reminders rather than trophies. They were always things like necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, books sometimes. That sort of thing. Not body parts or body fluids. She never took anything like that before, as far as I am aware.”

  Cotton said, “Why would she change?”

  “Perhaps it was just a matter of time.”

  Cotton was throwing question after question at me. “So why the frenzied attack? Why in such a public place? Why the body part? Aren’t serial killers creatures of habit? Perhaps Lyle’s gone so far off the rails that she’s finally lost it. What do you think?”

  “It wasn’t frenzied. It
might look that way because of the volume of blood, but she was in control the whole time. Never forget she is in control.”

  Cotton looked at me and then looked back at all the blood.

  I pointed to the crime scene, my throat and my eye as I said. “We’re here because Lyle wanted us here. The stabs to the throat hit main arteries. The scissors left in the eye socket was part of the message. The note said, ‘Hardy and Cotton, SEE what you made me do? I have a VISION of our future together, and you’re both invited to the party. When we’re finished there won’t be a dry EYE in the house. KL xxx.’ Lyle doesn’t lose control. Look around.”

  Cotton’s eyes moved over the circus around us. The police and tech teams. The onlookers and media.

  I put my hand on Cotton’s shoulder. I was trying not to sound like I was schooling her and spoke my next words more quietly. “This was a way to get you here, get me here and create all this.”

  Frustration was apparent in my voice. I knew I wasn’t in control of my own decisions; I was back looking at another dead body because Lyle had put me here. She had upped the ante.

  If the death of Etheridge hadn’t already made it clear, then for her own safety and the benefit of the investigation, I needed Cotton to understand she was in the big league now.

  “Right now, Lyle is deciding what I do, where I go and who I see. She’s taking me away from my family. You might not see it yet. With all due respect, you need to wake up. You’re still being naïve. If we don’t get out in front of this, I don’t want to think where we might end up.”

  I was suddenly feeling conflicted. What was I getting into? The feelings from past cases and the memories of how they had taken over my life flooded my mind. Did I really want this?

  Cotton was confused, and so was I. I could see I’d overstepped the mark. She was a very capable detective, and I knew I’d said too much. Cotton wasn’t having any of it.