Darkness Falls

by David Mark

  “Yeah, mate,” he says with a trace of a smile. “Kind of spotted that.”

  I smile back and breathe my way into a soft laugh. He joins me, and some of the tension leaves us both as we chuckle and shake our heads.

  “Your newsdesk see it?”

  “Doubt it,” I say, shrugging. “Neil can’t see his dick unless he breathes in. Can’t see him going to the effort of turning his head to watch the TV screen. I haven’t spoken to them yet. Didn’t have a lot to tell them from the press conference.”

  “No, I’d imagine not. I managed to get a bit in for first edition. Front page appeal.”

  “You mention my little incident?”

  “Referred to ‘tensions running high at the emotional press conference’. That was about it. Radio Humbershite mentioned that one of the reporters had launched a personal attack on the senior officer, but nobody really bothered using it. TV people might do a bit later, for a bit of drama, like.”

  “Christ, how did it look? Really?”

  “Like you lost it and flipped out. Relax, though, mate. People understood.”

  “What?” I ask, flinching as though somebody’s tried to wake me by driving a needle into my eyeball. “You told them who Kerry was?”

  “I had to,” he says, putting his arms up as though about to defend himself, or like a wizard showing there’s nothing up his sleeve. “What’s better? Them thinking you just spazzed out or knowing you were hurt because Roper had your sister up there? That he did it cos he’s a cunt and he wanted to show you up?”

  I slump into the wall, forehead to the cool brick, and groan. “I know, but. Aw bollocks.” I give up, knowing he’s right.

  “It’s fine,” he says, giving my shoulder a rub. He’s tender.

  “And Roper?”

  “Loved it. Made a joke after you left. Something about another happy customer, or your aim being as accurate as your reporting, then banged on. We were out five minutes after you.”

  “How d’you cover it?”

  “Well there was nothing more to it, once you’d gone. Kerry got upset as soon as she started speaking, once you’d fucked off. Got no sense out of her. Roper read a statement from her, but it was crap really. He wouldn’t say anything about Petrovsky. Nothing about gang wars. I put in some of the stuff that I had but the newsdesk took it out. Dull as dishwater by the time it got through the subs. Just some shite about a ‘caring and intelligent man’ being brutally shot to death as part of a double murder, in which another man was bludgeoned beyond recognition. Lukewarm. Crap, as well. How do you shoot somebody in a non-brutal way? How do you kill somebody gently? Death of a thousand paper cuts?”

  I rub the bridge of my nose and wander around to the water fountain. Take a swig that I feel trickling down into my belly. I swill my mouth out, feeling the agony in my gum shoot down my neck. Spit the unpleasantness into the silver bowl.

  Slap.

  I turn at the sound of a cricket ball landing in a fleshy palm.

  Choudhury. Gliding. Light on his pins for a fat fuck. Turban like the prow of a ship, cutting through foggy waters. Oozing across the landing, fifteen feet away.

  Stopping by the benches near the stairs to the canteen. A few words with a lumbering chap in a double-breasted blazer and threadbare cords. Choudhury leaning in. Words in his ear like he’s kissing his neck. Reassuring squeeze of a forearm. Files falling to the floor. A look from Choudhury that could straighten the other’s intestines.

  Then a swish, and gone.

  A couple of barristers stride past. Long legs and flowing robes. Solicitors behind them, pulling trolleys and riding coat-tails. The movement makes Tone and me look up, and as we do, Ella Butterworth’s family come out of a consulting room. They bring the cold with them. Their pain and grief is written in blue neon. I watch as a room full of people draw their clothing a little tighter, and shiver to find them damp.

  Mum smiles, politely, as she passes Tony and me, and heads to the courtroom. I try to nod encouragement, but the action stalls, like a gulp that can’t be swallowed. And I’m just standing there. Seeing raindrops on muddy photo frames, and words blurring and blotting on slivers of card, wedged into wreaths that should have been wedding bouquets. I’m cowering on a beach, watching a tsunami, their oceanic swell of grief, and wishing it would wash me clean.

  Thinking of Ella Butterworth and the look in her eyes in the moment the blade violated her tender, delicate skin.

  Imagining the shadows that danced across the pale canvas of her face, like cave paintings in the firelight.

  Wondering if the girl who dreamed of pumpkin carriages and fairy castles had time to mourn the shredding of her wedding dress, her princess’s ballgown. Whether she spilled tears at the tearing of the expensive silk her family could ill-afford, before her mind turned to the business of opening her mouth, and screaming for her life.

  34

  It’s 1.24.

  Me and Tony are sitting by the fire in Ye Olde White Hart. He’s on red wine. I’m onto my second pint of lager. Wired and drowsy all at once.

  Decent pub, this. Proper pub. Dark. Leather studded seats. Hardwood floor, darkened and scuffed. Mahogany walls, almost black. Thick, frosted windows. An accountant and a solicitor propping up the bar, trying to make their lives more tolerable with two pints of Stella and a game of sudoku.

  I’m feeling all right. Three hours of work. Three hours of doing what I’m good at. Scribbling, at just under 100 words per minute. Writing down what comes out of the mouths of people who, for today at least, are interesting. Watching, as Tin-Tin Choudhury just kicked a great big hole in the prosecution’s case.

  “I hate the twat, but he’s a talent,” I say, tipping a handful of peanuts into my palm, and proceeding to eat them individually, at junctures in my speech, as though devouring punctuation. “That really has to rate up there among my favourite days in court.”

  “I’m with you,” says Tony H. His face lights up as he recalls it, and in his dirty brown mac, he looks for a moment like one of his own cigars, being inhaled at the feet. “He spat him out, didn’t he? Fuck, it really could go either way.”

  We sit in silence, brooding. Cadbury’s acquittal would mean a scrum. It means national reporters in droves, flashing cheque books, sticking feet in doorways, pissing off the police. It means regional reporters like Tony and me looking like amateurs, trying to persuade people to talk to us without a fucking penny or a pint to entice them. It means our backgrounders are a waste of time. It means a whole new investigation. More work.

  On a human level, it means we’re living in a city where a man who hacked up a girl in her wedding dress is still wandering around.

  It also means Roper has messed up.

  But it has to be Cadbury. It has to be. If it isn’t, there’s evil among us. Evil free, and Jess missing.

  “Wonder what he gets paid?” mutters Tony H. “More than me, no doubt.”

  “That kid at the bar earns more money than you.”

  “I’m in this for the love of it.”

  “Love? You?”

  “You’ll hurt my feelings.”

  “Feelings?”

  “Yeah, they’re new. Bought them off the internet. I’m not sure they fit.”

  We both laugh, then fall silent as we replay the morning’s action, looking for the choicest of quotes. Thinking of Ella Butterworth’s fiancé, and the way Choudhury had eviscerated him, and Roper’s case.

  It was clear from the outset that the lad was broken. He had the air of a toy left outside in the rain, rusting to nothingness; never to be played with or enjoyed. He was too young to deal with any of this. Too young to hear the details of his sweetheart’s violation, murder, decapitation. Nineteen years old, and done. Done in.

  He’d been born to be mediocre, had Jamie. Decently mediocre. Five GCSEs. Flair for music and good at setting the timer on the video. Curious fold of skin at the back his neck which he was teased about at school. Three good shirts and a smart pair of shoes for bapt
isms and funerals. One suit, and he wore it when they buried his girl. Wore it when police interviewed him, under caution, for the third time. Wore it to job interviews for roles he hadn’t got. Would never get. Something about him, now. An air of November. Of damp leaves and muddy turn-ups. Fogged breath, and wet eyes.

  Jamie’s life had ended when the knife went into Ella Butterworth. We could all see it as he pushed, then pulled, and pushed again at the wrong door to the courtroom, before stumbling into a room full of eyes and pity.

  Eight steps up to the witness box.

  Same suit, now loose at the shoulders. Burgundy shirt and an earring. Skinny. Smudge of stubble under his lower lip. Leather strap on his right wrist. Aggression, in his walk, his stance.

  Had to be reminded to keep his voice up, as the prosecutor walked him gently through his evidence. No tears. No trembling lip. No emotion in his voice. Frequent sighs. Wringing his hands. Sipping water. Not letting himself look at Cadbury. Knowing he would only visualise what the monster had done to the petals of his rose. Probably thought of nothing else since the day she was taken.

  Deep breaths through the nose, as though steadying his stomach, as he described their last words, their last moments together. Thinking of the last time he kissed her, held her hand, buried his nose in her belly button, like she liked.

  And me, sitting there, feeling for the boy, but competitive. Convinced that my own pain was more real, my own misery more acute than that which racks him, devours him.

  Me, wondering as his responses became more weary and his manner became aggressive, whether he’d ever raised a hand to her.

  Watching, as steel entered his face, wire entered his jaw, mud entered his head. Questions. Times. Places. Dates. Words. Confirming a story he had told a thousand times.

  Then showtime. Cross-examination. Tin-Tin rising to his feet, like a new island bubbling out of the sea. Jamie balling his fists, preparing himself for a fight that he would finish on his face, and with a fat barrister’s cock in his arse.

  Jamie didn’t recognise himself in Choudhury’s words. He didn’t know the selfish, ambitious, ruthless and violent young man who had bullied Ella from the moment they met until the night he abandoned her to be filleted and fucked. Nor did he recognise the girl Tin-Tin described: the manipulative slut who’d cheated on him at her college Christmas party, had told her friends she wasn’t sure if he was the man she wanted to grow old with, and whose appetite for al fresco sex and exhibitionism suggested she would have loved the thought of fucking a stranger against a garden fence in her wedding dress.

  He spilled his water on the evidence bundle when Tin-Tin showed him the transcripts of Ella’s outbox. The mobile text messages she had sent to her friend Tanya just four hours before she went missing, and which she hadn’t thought to delete – saying it all felt false, that she was trying to act excited for her family’s sake but that the wedding was coming around too soon. The message, too, from six months earlier, which Jamie had sent saying he would kill her if she ever looked at that bloke who had chatted her up in The Ship.

  Ella’s family stayed quiet. Wrestled with it all. Tongues were pressed hard against teeth. Jaws locked. Fingers gripped. They clung on to the image of the happy young couple that they had known; turned up the volume of their happy memories over the drone of Tin-Tin’s lies. But they didn’t look at Jamie as he left; hoarse, from shouting back at Choudhury around the ball of tears that wedged in his throat, from trying to defend his choices, his mistakes, his entire relationship. His life.

  There was no nod from the public gallery as he shuffled by; smaller and greyer than when he walked in. No smile. No “it’s over now” and an arm around the shoulder. They couldn’t. Not yet. Not until they untangled what they knew, from what they had been told.

  “Poor kid, though eh?” says Tony H, coming back from the bar with a whisky and dropping it noisily in front of me. “As if he hadn’t been through enough.”

  “It’s what Tin-Tin gets paid for. Just muddying the waters. He’s not trying to suggest anything. Just create enough confusion to make any conviction unsafe. Does it well.” Then, as an afterthought. “I’m still going to kill him though.”

  Tony H smiles as something funky comes on the CD player.

  “How you going to cover the second witness, then?” I ask, turning back to Tony. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Never thought Tin-Tin would meet his match in a Hull chav.”

  We share a smile, enjoying the memory. It had been a truly wonderful encounter. Tin-Tin Choudhury with his Oxford education, his twenty-five years at the bar, his Queen’s Counsel stripes and his perfect enunciation, against Lewis, the ultimate little shit.

  He came through the door in a fake Burberry baseball cap and a fake Fred Perry jumper, wearing skiing gloves that would be too big for a gorilla, still shouting at the usher who had interrupted his cigarette to shepherd him into Court One.

  Five foot eight, but hunched. Kept his head down as he walked, so the peak of his hat always covered his face. CCTV generation.

  He made Tony H look elegant. Pinched, sunken face. Hollow cheeks. Spots around his mouth and chin, hiding among the unruly stubble, growing in clumps and patches on his upper lip and pointed chin. Eyes the colour and consistency of French brie. Wiry, too. Skinny, but there’s something under it. A chipolata sausage around a nine-inch nail.

  Really, really didn’t want to be there.

  Aggressive, from the start. Didn’t seem to realise that Anderson wasn’t the enemy. Didn’t seem to realise he was there as a witness and not a defendant.

  Didn’t realise that when the judge told him to stop swearing, he fucking meant it.

  Talking us through it in grunts and obscenities. That night. That fucking night.

  He’d met Cadbury a couple of years back in a pub on the Orchard Park estate. Hit it off. Common interest in drinking and PlayStations, cannabis and wanking. No, he didn’t have a job. No, he’d never had one, unless selling a bit of ecstasy counted. Yes, they were friends. Best friends? Aye, fuck it, whatever. Hung around. Went to each other’s flats. Watched videos. Sometimes Cadbury’s place, sometimes his. Usually three or four people there. Just watching telly and shit. Eating takeaways. Talking. Bullshitting.

  Knew Cadbury had a temper though, he said. He’d seen it. Bit of a weirdo, really, he said. Girls didn’t like him. Why? Ugly fucker, isn’t he? Quiet, too. Just sat there, watching them. Watching until he started breathing deep. Then he’d try it on. Some awful line belched in their faces. Get a knock-back. Lose it. Just fucking lose it. Had seen him screaming in girls’ faces before. Screaming that they were nothing, that they couldn’t treat him like this, that they were just fucking sluts. He’d seen him smash himself in the face with a bottle of Carlsberg when some lass had said she didn’t want a drink one night in The Sailmakers. Just Cadbury, though, wasn’t it? He was a mate.

  Then that night. The night they were all round Lewis’s gaff, and Cadbury wasn’t right. Hadn’t been right for a few days. Quieter. Tenser. White knuckles and grinding teeth. Muttering about bitches, about never getting a fuck. He’d always had a thing about one of the local TV weathergirls, his favourite wank, but now he was telling stories about what he’d like to fuck her with; what he’d like to stick inside her. Wanted to see how much room there was in her arse.

  And that night, the night he killed her…

  Objection!

  Well, he fucking did I’m telling yer…

  Objection!

  Yeah, whatever, that night, they was all at his place and Cadbury was giving out a harder time than usual. Could be mean when he’d been drinking, and he’d been drinking for days. Big lad with a temper, you put up with it, don’t you? Not worth the fuss. But this night, he’d gone too far. Started taking the piss out of my lass, the fat fuck. Been seeing her a while. Good lass. Nice girl. Cared for her. Figured I could do worse. Told Cadbury and me other mate, Steve Venables, that cunt, told them I was thinking of fucking proposing
, like. Steve wasn’t bothered. Cadbury said nowt. Just sat there, drinking Lynx, eating a Chinky. We were watching some film. Cadbury’s just sitting there, saying nowt, staring, eating, drinking, smoking, and then he goes off. Screaming and hollering about how she was a slut, how he’d shagged her, how Steve had shagged her, everybody had fucking shagged her and she was dirty, dirty like they all were, and he’s in my face. Picks up this knife we’d been using to chop the gear…

  Marijuana?

  Aye, fucking weed, and he’s got it to my eye, and he’s nuts, just fucking crackers, and then he’s gone. Just drops me and goes to the door.

  And he took the knife?

  Fucking must have.

  And then what happened, Mr Lewis…

  “…left it a bit, didn’t I? Had fights before and always best to let him cool down. Just chilled for a bit. Then a few days later I reckon it’s time to end it. Make up. Give him some weed and borrow a film or something, y’know? So I does. I goes round. Use me key, like always. Walk in. He’s sat there in his living room in his boxer shorts. Pleased enough to see me. Watch a bit of telly. Have a crack. He goes to the bog and I remember about that film I wanted to borrow. I gets up to get it from his room, walk in, and there she fucking is. The girl from the telly. The one who’s been missing. I shit myself. She’s there, dead in his bed. Half-naked. Holes in her like she’s a fishing net. So much blood I thought she was wearing a red dress. I’m puking and crying and gasping for breath, and I just run. I’m out of there. Cause he’s killed her, hasn’t he? Finally done what he always wanted, that sick fat fuck in the box over there. I just sprint for home, thinking he’s behind me, and I get in and lock the door, and open a bottle and drink myself fucking sick. Then I wake up and puke and cry and puke some more, and then I phone the police. Then I’m getting fucking arrested, then bailed, and getting arrested again, and getting the shit kicked out of me by that flashy copper off the telly…”