If It Bleeds

by Bernie Crosthwaite

  I couldn’t see anything odd about the picture. I examined it close-up in sections — the river, the weir, the buildings. Frantic now, I went back to the full image. I made it smaller, larger, brighter, dimmer. Still nothing screamed for attention.

  I swivelled some more, paced about some more. Why would anyone have stolen this, and rearranged the other prints to hide the gap? There had to be something about this picture, I was certain of it.

  I returned to the screen, increasing the enlargement on each part of the image. Then I saw it. With an almost audible click my brain made the final connection, the detail that my camera had objectively recorded and I had failed to see.

  I sat back in the chair, winded with shock. Of course. Now I knew why the print had been stolen.

  And who had stolen it.

  *

  It was nearly half an hour since Stan had left me. I tried ringing his control booth but there was no answer. Perhaps he was on his way. I remembered the other thing I had come here for and retrieved my Nikon from the stationery cupboard. I switched off the computer and scanner, doused the lights and trekked back through the newsroom, taking the stairs down to the first floor. I walked up and down the corridor for a few minutes, wondering if I should ring Laverack straight away, or wait until I had more concrete evidence.

  Still no Stan. I began to worry. What if he’d fallen on one of the narrow metal walkways above the machinery? It would be just like him to try and fix something on his own without calling out maintenance.

  Hitching the camera strap on to my shoulder, I pushed through the double doors that led to the glass bridge, now only illuminated by streetlights and the occasional passing car. As usual it reeked of stale cigarette smoke. I could just see a tubby form leaning on the handrail, looking out through the window. Stan must be thinking about Lara. He’d lost track of time, remembering his beautiful niece.

  “Stan,” I called softly, but he didn’t answer. I was right, he was going deaf. “Stan!” I said loudly. “Come on, I’ve got what I need. Let’s go.” Still no response. I began to walk towards him. Perhaps he was ill. My steps quickened.

  “Stan, are you all right?”

  Close up I could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead as if he’d been running. “Shake a leg, Stan. Time to get you to bed.” I touched his arm gently so as not to startle him.

  But it was me who jerked back in surprise.

  He keeled over backwards, slowly at first, then accelerating as he neared the floor, landing with a soft thud, his arms spread wide. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. His tongue stuck out grotesquely. A length of black cable cut into his broad neck.

  The contents of my stomach rose up into my throat in an acid tide.

  I cradled him in my arms, rocking back and forth, just as I’d held him several days ago, when I told him of Lara’s death. Then, half-aware that it was a stupid and illogical thing to do, I took off Stan’s cardigan, folded it and placed it like a pillow under his head.

  I heard a noise. Faint but unmistakable. It was the stertorous breathing of someone gasping for air. I got up and stumbled forwards, my feet like lead weights. There it was again, the laboured breath, closer now. A sound I knew all too well.

  The breathing stopped. I listened hard, turning my head to catch the faintest sound. Nothing. I moved forward into the gloom at the far end of the glass tunnel. The door was open.

  I walked into darkness.

  Twenty-six

  My whole body ached from the tension of sitting still. I eased my legs forward from their cramped position. The huge roll of paper looked like a big white cushion, but it was as hard as steel against my spine.

  I rubbed my aching back with two clenched fists. Time was playing its usual tricks. I had no idea how long I’d been hiding here. A few seconds? Ten minutes? An hour? It had given me time to work out some of the details that had eluded me before. I hoped it was only minutes. The painfully laboured breathing I’d heard on the glass bridge meant I didn’t have long.

  Without warning the voice boomed out, “I know you’re there! I’m going to find you. Why don’t you save me the trouble?”

  Nothing to fear but…

  Everything to fear. Fear flooded over me like a cold shower. I gulped in lungfuls of dusty air to control the shivering that gripped me from head to foot.

  “I just want to talk, explain everything.” The voice was softer now, more pleading. It was impossible to tell how far away it was. The press hall bounced the sound around its vast spaces before throwing it back, distorted and embellished with echo.

  I rocked myself until the shivering stopped, clutching the camera to my chest like a baby. With the help of the Nikon the picture was complete, all the pixels had slotted into the right position. The image was still murky, the details lacked sharpness, but I knew enough. There was only one big unanswered question — why?

  I heard a series of clicks. To my tired and confused brain it sounded like the underwater language transmitted by dolphins or whales. The shaking started again, but this time it came from outside myself, like the tremor of an earthquake the split second before it erupts.

  With a great whirring groan the massive roll of paper I was leaning against began to move. I leapt up and away from it and clung to the wire cage. Behind me I knew what was happening. As if someone was pulling on a giant roll of toilet tissue, the paper was swooping towards the presses where it was snapped up, rolled, cut and folded into complete newspapers of pure blank whiteness.

  The noise was deafening. Even with my hands clamped over my ears, my eardrums felt battered, swollen with the racket, ready to burst. Inching my way along the wire mesh, the relentless movement of the web at my back, I slowly eased myself into the narrow walkway between the machines.

  Suddenly the giant toilet roll juddered and stopped.

  The lights snapped on.

  *

  After such profound darkness the harsh fluorescent lighting dazzled me. I was paralysed. No doubt that was the intention.

  But though my limbs refused to move, my mind raced on, flitting erratically. I was a fool to have run from my hiding place. Some hiding place. It must have been obvious all along. The presses had started rolling and I’d been flushed out like game.

  I could see Stan’s office thirty metres away, glowing with a faint green light. The machinery was controlled from that nerve centre.

  “Such a waste of paper,” came the booming echoey voice.

  I stared at the stack of blank papers and silently agreed.

  Nothing to fear but fear itself, I chanted in my head. It was only fear that froze my muscles and fractured my thinking. Why worry? After all, there was nothing to fear. Nothing. Apart from my violent death, of course.

  “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  Was I really supposed to believe that? Anger unlocked my limbs. I darted in a direction I hoped was away from the mocking voice.

  Another click and the place was plunged into darkness. I began to run, trusting to blind instinct. My camera bumped against my hip in time to my pounding feet. It was so heavy and awkward I thought about ripping it from my shoulder and throwing it away. What use was it now? It had landed me in this shit, hadn’t it?

  “At last.”

  The voice wasn’t booming now. It was quiet and calm. And very close.

  I turned round.

  At first I could see nothing in the darkness. Then I heard the shuffle of feet, the intake of a sharp excited breath.

  “I’m here.” It was no more than a whisper.

  My eyes adjusted. The silhouette of a figure emerged from the gloom. I backed away. My bare heels made contact with a rough concrete wall. Nowhere to run. And anyway, I was tired of running.

  “Jude. I’m so glad I’ve found you.”

  The familiar voice was a little hoarser than usual, slightly out of breath.

  “Hello, Matt.”

  Twenty-seven

  “It’s good to see you, Jude.”

  “
You can’t see me, not properly. Why don’t you switch the light on?”

  “I’d rather not,” said Matt. “I like the dark. I like talking in the dark, remember?”

  I pushed aside the memory of Matt and me in a darkened room, sitting naked on the floor, limbs entwined. “Where’s Daniel?”

  “Ah… Daniel.”

  My heart lurched. “Is he dead?”

  “He wasn’t the last time I saw him.”

  “He’s in the control room, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe.” I heard the jingling sound of keys. “But it’s locked.”

  “Take me to him.” If we were both going to die I wanted us to be together.

  “Not yet. I need to tell you everything, Jude. I know it won’t go any further.” He laughed drily. “Truth is a burden. It should be passed on. I pass it on to you, then I can live my days without the weight of it.”

  “All your talk of truth, but you lied to me, Matt.”

  “I never lied to you.”

  “We were in The Crooked Man after the police press conference. Remember? You told me you bought your house from Ravenbridge Properties. But that wasn’t true. It was there all the time, on that missing print, almost too small to see with the naked eye — the name of your street — Raven Walk. The first house in the row, the one with the bent over for sale sign — that’s yours, isn’t it? And guess what’s on that sign — Kerwin and Black. Why lie about it? Once I’d found the print and enlarged it, I knew exactly why. Because you knew Lara, and because you killed her.”

  His voice was so quiet now I had to strain to hear him. “She deserved it.”

  “No way.”

  “You don’t know how strongly she came on to me.”

  “Lara was very mixed up. You weren’t the only one she took up to Chapel House.”

  “I know that. But I thought I was special. And the way she insisted we keep it secret, that just made it even more exciting. We’d have a drink, then we went at it like —”

  “Stop it!”

  “Sorry, Jude. Sex with you was great, but let’s face it, it was a matter of expediency. Lara just took my breath away.”

  Expediency? That got to me, but I shoved the hurt aside. “You shouldn’t have left evidence behind.”

  “I didn’t.” He sounded stung by the accusation.

  “But you did. I had time to think about it while I was hiding. It wasn’t much, just a bottle top. Belgian beer, not Dutch like the police thought. The kind you were drinking in the pub that day. It may be just a little thing, but lots of small dots make the big picture. Never forget that.”

  “You sound so smug, Jude.”

  “Can’t you take it, the fact that you’ve messed up?” I paused, trying to control my anger. I needed to get this truth-telling session over with fast, before it was too late. I knew what shock and trauma did to Daniel’s breathing. I just prayed he had his inhaler with him.

  “Then Lara wanted to end it,” Matt went on. “I thought she’d found another bloke, but she denied it. I knew she was lying. I told her about the Bedouins —”

  “Their test for liars — a hot knife on the tongue? I know all about that.”

  “You do?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “That’s the trouble with you, Jude. You know far too much.”

  “You pestered her, hanging round her flat, leaving a film for her to watch — a warning about what she could expect. No doubt you liked to flick your lighter open and shut and threaten to heat up a knife. You really frightened her.”

  “Good! You see, when you love someone, and they let you down, the hurt is almost unbearable, and then, do you know what happens? It turns to hate. Very pure and clean, like acid.”

  I recalled what Norman Foley had said about passion turning cold. I had to grudgingly accept that the psychic detective had been proved right.

  “And if you couldn’t have her, nobody else would?”

  Matt stepped closer. “You don’t know everything, do you? It’s not as simple as that. It could have been anyone.”

  “Anyone? What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you remember Tony Quinnell getting on our backs last autumn? Get the circulation up or else. Bigger and better stories, the more sensational and tabloid the better.”

  There was a rush of bile in my stomach as I began to see what he was saying.

  “If it bleeds, it leads.” Matt imitated Tony’s grainy London accent.

  “You killed for copy?”

  “You could say that. I needed a big story, Jude. I needed a murder. You’ve heard of self-help, haven’t you? I decided to do it myself. But who would make the best headline — that fat woman who keeps taking my parking space on Raven Walk? One of the vagrants who hang around the town centre who nobody will miss? Or the murder of a beautiful young girl, who by the way had messed with my mind and deserved everything she got?”

  “You’re sick.”

  “I’m ambitious, Jude, that’s all. Do you think I’m going to spend my life in Ravenbridge? When I’ve milked this story dry I’ll quietly hand in my resignation, and with the glowing references I’ll get from Tony, I’ll move on. I fancy TV. It’ll make a change from print journalism. Do you think I’ll look good in a khaki shirt, reporting from the latest war zone?”

  “I’ve heard enough. Take me to Daniel. Let’s get this over with.” If the lights had been on, Matt would have seen I was incandescent with fury.

  “I haven’t finished. Don’t you want to know how I did it?”

  “No.”

  “I think you’re lying. After all the effort you’ve put in, trying to track me down — of course you want to know.”

  The bastard was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “I feel sure you’re going to tell me anyway.”

  His dark shape leaned back against one of the iron legs of the high conveyor belt. “I phoned Lara last Saturday and asked if we could meet one last time. I’d already messed with the starter on the Polo while she was at work. All that reporting on car crime came in handy — I knew how to slide underneath, reach up into the wheel arch and cut the wire from the battery. But it nearly all went wrong right there — she couldn’t see me that night, or on the Sunday because it was New Year’s Eve. So we made it Monday night. Luckily for me, the garage was closed for two days so her car still wasn’t fixed. I offered to drive her up to Chapel House, but she refused. She wanted to meet in a public place.”

  “I told you she was frightened of you.”

  He ignored me, speaking in a rhythmic monotone, as if he’d gone over these events in his mind many times. “We agreed to meet in a pub in town at half nine. Of course I didn’t want to be seen in public with her the night she was murdered. I knew she’d come by bus, so I waited near the bus station. It wasn’t difficult to persuade her into my car — it was a bitterly cold night. But instead of going to the pub I drove to her flat. She wasn’t very pleased, all that stuff about it being her own private space. But I spun her some yarn about not feeling well and needing an aspirin. Once we got inside, I insisted that we watch the film I gave her. I pulled her into the kitchen and took one of her own knives — nice touch, that — and heated it in the flame from my cigarette lighter. All I wanted was for her to tell me the name of her new boyfriend before I killed her. But she fought like a cat.”

  I cheered mentally. Lara had fought for her life and tried to protect Daniel. My respect for her soared.

  “She ended up with blisters all round her mouth, and still she wouldn’t tell me the name. All she would say was that yes, there was someone else, and he was special and he’d given her a bracelet.” Matt’s voice became more animated. “That made it easier, somehow. I used her own scarf to strangle her. I even thought about making love to her.”

  “Love?”

  “But it wasn’t that sort of excitement. And I had plenty to do once she was dead. My plan was to carve something to do with the occult on her body — newspapers like that sort of thing. I got the idea for the pentagram from that necklace
Harrison always wears. And I wanted blood, plenty of blood…”

  If it bleeds, it leads. I silently cursed Tony Quinnell.

  “Only I forgot that the body doesn’t bleed much after death. I was seriously annoyed about that. Should I cut my own finger and spill it over her T-shirt? No good because of DNA testing. Then I had a great idea. Where can you find blood, Jude?”

  “The hospital?”

  “Clever girl. It was after midnight by then. But the good thing about hospitals is that they never close. I grabbed a wheelchair from the entrance and pushed that about till I found the right department. The few people around just assumed I was a porter.”

  Like they’d seen me as a cleaner at the police station. Appearances were all, it seemed. But appearances could deceive.

  “Once I’d stolen one of those pouches of blood, I went back to Lara’s flat. A bit of blood spilled on the floor when I was cutting the corner of the plastic. But I got most of it on Lara’s chest.” He snorted. “Just think about it, Jude. The police are looking for some poor innocent sap whose only crime was to donate a pint of blood!”

  I silently screamed at him to get on with it.

  “With my trip to the hospital I was running late. And I still had to take her body to the park.”

  “Why? Why did you have to leave her there, like some discarded piece of rubbish?”

  “Which she was!” Matt was breathing hard. “But that wasn’t the reason. Don’t you see why? If I’d left her in the flat it could have been ages before she was found. It was vital her body was discovered in the early morning, in time for the staff meeting.”

  “Not to mention the second edition of the Post?”

  “Exactly. We had no decent front-page story — we never do just after New Year. I knew Tony would love this one. I wrapped her in a couple of bin liners, and as soon as the park gates opened at six-thirty I drove over there. It was still dark and it was so cold I was pretty sure no one would be around. She didn’t weigh much, but she was already stiff, which made her damn difficult to carry.”