Tattoo

by J G Alva

  And her bra.

  Her nipples were dark.

  He looked at her face.

  She was still unconscious.

  He touched her left breast.

  His arousal was almost painful.

  But she might wake up soon, and he didn’t want to be caught out; nothing could kill his ardour as effectively as that.

  Besides, he had a new toy to play with: an old paintball gun that he had bought off eBay.

  Of course, it wasn’t the gun he was excited about, so much as the ammunition that he had modified for it.

  They had once been your average, garden variety paintballs, but he had painstakingly broken open each one, removed the paint, and treated the plastic shells with a special hardener of his own creation.

  It had been tricky work, had taken him days. He had to re-seal the modified paintballs, but still leave a fault line so that they burst on impact. Otherwise they’d be no good to anyone; they would just bounce off harmlessly.

  Well. Not harmlessly.

  Then, with a syringe, he had filled the treated paintballs with hydrochloric acid. When he had withdrawn the syringe, he had dabbed a small amount of the hardener over the hole left behind.

  There were problems of course. Eventually, the acid would eat through the hardener, and then through the thin plastic shell of the paintballs. But that usually took a couple of hours. For now, they were fine.

  Guy attached the canister to the top of the gun and then, carefully taking aim, he began taking shots at her.

  In a little while, with the acid eating into her skin, she woke up.

  Oh, she woke up alright.

  Her screams were like music to his ears.

  And Guy couldn’t stop laughing.

  *

  He loved his machines.

  He loved the mechanics, the reliability, the ingenuity that went into each device. They were like a work of Art; a working work of Art.

  In their own way, they were as beautiful as the pieces in The Play itself.

  He had a large collection of them, and delighted in playing with each one. When he purchased a new one, he was often as excited as a child. After he had explored their basic function, he would then take them apart, to see how they worked. Perhaps he would even modify them. He would spend hours at it, and never really know where the time had gone.

  He particularly liked the Beef Head Dropper.

  It was like a gigantic, flat metal claw, and needed a hydraulic power unit and an air-over-oil intensifier to run it. And it had a dual trigger. You know. For safety. The mechanism wouldn’t work unless you activated both triggers on each grip at the same time. Which was good. If you were able to somehow activate it with only one trigger, and your hand happened to be between those claws…

  Well. You’d know it, alright.

  It was designed for farmers to use on their cattle. It made things so much easier for him.

  In the past, he would be hacking away for hours with an axe or a knife until the job was done. And he’d be exhausted. Which kind of took the fun out of things.

  With the Beef Head Dropper, all he had to do was depress both triggers simultaneously, and it was over in a second.

  Somehow, Helen guessed what he was about to do before he even put the claws around her throat.

  Truth be told, he was surprised she was even conscious, with all the paintballs she had taken. She looked nothing short of a carcass, with most of the flesh over her front melted and black and oozing. She was a mess.

  But he hadn’t marred her face in any way.

  He liked it too much.

  Dangling on her rope, she struggled, whipping back and forth a little, like a child’s swing in a high wind. Guy got the claws around her neck just the same, and then depressed both triggers.

  Brr…Chunk.

  Her head didn’t come off as quick as the others. A tendon seemed to get wrapped around the claws, and he had to snap the blades shut twice more before they got through it, by which time he was sprayed rather liberally with her blood.

  Helen’s head hit the floor with a soft bump, rolled, stopped with her face in the dirt.

  Poor Helen.

  Guy once again felt that warm glow of pride, of a job well done. The thing was, he was getting to enjoy this more and more, not less. It was surprising. He wondered if there was a limit to his pleasure; it certainly didn’t feel like there was.

  When he bent to pick up her head, he found that he was whistling.

  *

  The tattoo of course was the pièce de résistance.

  They always would be, as long as The Play was allowed to continue.

  He had puzzled over why he had chosen tattoos, and had not been able to uncover any definitive answer. He supposed that there was a wildness to them; you couldn’t look at a person with tattoos and not feel that there was something dangerous about them. But he thought the real reason might be that they harked back to the genesis of his creativity: the first thing he could remember doing as a boy was drawing. Just drawing, and drawing, and drawing. His Grandfather had always said he had a talent, and Guy had always been suffused with joy at the compliment.

  He had an old traditional two coil tattoo machine that he kept in the workshop, next to the old dentist’s chair. It was heavy in his hand, but he liked the weight of it against his wrist; it seemed to somehow mirror the gravity of the task at hand.

  After the blood had stopped flowing, he moved Helen’s body to the dentist’s chair, propping it awkwardly upright in the seat; it kept wanting to slip down. He turned her arm so that he could see it clearly in the light from the lamp on the workbench. Next he placed the stencil he had prepared earlier over the spot where the tattoo would look best. He then transferred the design of the stencil on to her skin, pulling back to reveal the ghostly lines of his design. Then he fired up the machine. He had already loaded the inks and was ready to begin.

  And he did.

  Four hours later, it was done.

  He came back to himself, almost as if in a trance, to notice that his back ached, his eyesight had grown fuzzy, and the muscles in the hand that held the needles had locked, and he had some trouble unlocking them.

  But it was done. Another spectacular result. Who could have known he would be so professional?

  He looked at his watch. No. He had a timetable and he couldn’t really mess it up. It was as integral to The Play as the tattoos were themselves.

  God, if only he could be there to see their faces.

  *

  CHAPTER 5

  From the car, they watched Sean leave the car park and cross the road toward St. Mary Redcliffe Church.

  It was two o’ clock in the morning, and except for the activity at the foot of the steps in front of the church the roads in Redcliffe were deserted. A portable light had been set up and the hard white halogen glare transformed the people bustling around the body into indistinguishable silhouettes. Sutton thought with distaste, it’s a midnight mass to another sacrifice. He couldn’t see the body, but knew it was there, felt the presence of it in the night, but too many milling figures obscured it from his view.

  “Now I know what a sardine feels like,” Sutton said.

  Robin turned.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve got to get out,” he said, and pulling the handle, clobbered the car door open with his foot, straightening his spine and hearing it pop and feeling sweet relief in his muscles.

  There was a little wind, and it was cold. The silence in this usually busy part of the city was eerie. He shut the door and stared at the crime scene. There had to be some way to break this, he thought, some key. The tattoos? But what did they mean?

  The sound of the front passenger door opening made him turn. Robin clambered out. There was no expression in her face, except for a furtiveness in her eyes.

  Without speaking, they both stared at the area bathed in light. The church loomed over it, dark, brooding and oppressive. It was a little awe inspiring to thin
k that someone – or someones – had been worshipping on this same site for over nine hundred years. This last incarnation was still almost eight hundred years old, and that was impressive too. The spire was the tallest building in Bristol, and it seemed to want to pierce the clouds…and might be able to do so, if they ventured just a little lower.

  “Queen Elizabeth the First called St. Mary Redcliffe the ‘fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England’ once, a long time ago. Still pretty impressive though, don’t you think?”

  Robin gave him a non-committal shrug.

  “Do you know a lot about history?” She asked, more to make conversation, he thought, than from any real interest.

  He shrugged.

  “I think it’s good to know a little about where you live,” he said.

  “Or the people you live with,” she added.

  It was a statement casually made, but Sutton felt that it was heavy with hidden meaning.

  Over the roof of Sean’s car, Sutton studied Robin’s profile. She had good lines, of that there was no doubt, but there was a starved, desperate look to her, like an animal in the wild. With a bit more weight on her skinny frame, she would have made a good model for the Pre-Raphaelites, with that dark hair and pale creamy skin – a look for the Classicists. At that moment her jaw was set, her eyes narrowed, her head at an angle. He knew that pose, recognised it, had seen it so many times before, on born again Christians and single mothers and new widows: it was a look of remote and incomprehensible resolution, of a standard of behaviour set higher than most…a standard that everyone else could never truly understand, and would almost certainly never attain. There was a big hungry engine running in Robin, and it was eating her up; it would take a special man to be able to satisfy it.

  Sutton had no inclination to be so engaged.

  “Dr. Robin Sails,” he said.

  As if coming back to the conversation, Robin turned and said, “yes?”

  “What was your PhD in?”

  “Oh. Psychotherapy.”

  “So you’re a Psychiatrist?”

  Robin shook her head. Strands had escaped the dark clips that maintained the shape of her hair, and she brushed them from her face.

  “No. A Psychotherapist.”

  Sutton frowned.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “It’s a fine distinction,” she admitted, with a small smile. “Psychiatrists are more interested in the biological aspects of mental health, whereas Psychotherapists are interested in opening a dialogue with the client. You know, to increase self awareness, and to enable other choices of thought and feeling and action, so that we can affect change, to improve the mental health of the client.” Robin looked amused when she said, “whereas Psychologists cover both psychological assessment and psychotherapy.”

  “Right,” Sutton said.

  “I know,” Robin said. “It’s complicated.”

  “So do you think you can make an assessment on this guy?” Sutton indicated the crime scene with a nod. “The Head Hunter?”

  “Please don’t call him that,” Robin said, fear burning in her eyes.

  “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  Robin thought for a moment, looking over Sutton’s shoulder across the empty car park at their backs.

  “It’s not really my area,” she said finally.

  “Then make an educated guess.”

  Robin stared out into the dark car park again, lost in thought.

  Her eyes moved to him, focusing; they were a strikingly deep blue, he realised. Intense. The skin of her face was so tight he could quite clearly see the skull underneath.

  “Your average serial killer starts reasonably young,” she said. “So I’m assuming he’s a white male in his twenties. And probably has a history of violent acts. Serial killers usually start with animals.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course, none of this will help us catch him. There’s no study being conducted that charts the rise of potential psychopaths in this country. At least, none that I know of anyway. You never know - we might get lucky: there might be an adolescent attack that is on record somewhere, that will point us in the right direction. But I’m not holding my breath.” She paused thoughtfully. “He probably has above average intelligence. Is engaging, maybe even charming. But he will most likely be emotionally deficient.” She looked at Sutton. “He won’t have many friends. He won’t know how to relate to them.”

  “A loner.”

  “Yes.” Another pause. “The heads are trophies,” she said. “Spoils of war.”

  Sutton nodded; he had guessed as much himself.

  She continued, “he would have experienced abuse as a child, perhaps even as a teenager.”

  “Sexual abuse?”

  “Most definitely. And the dysfunction will have continued.”

  “He can’t form proper relationships with women.”

  “No. What he is demonstrating is a kind of extreme Displacement, and toward a specific gender, a specific type,” she continued. At Sutton’s confused look, she explained, “Displacement is anger that cannot be directed at the source of its creation, for one reason or another, and so is directed elsewhere. For example: your boss is disrespectful, so you go home and take it out on a punch bag. From that we can deduce that this guy – whoever he is – probably had a severely dysfunctional relationship with his mother growing up. Or with a domineering female figure in his life. Which would explain his antagonism towards the women he chooses as his victims. The violence, the brutality.”

  There was a pause, into which Sutton dropped, “and what explains your antagonism toward me?”

  Robin’s mouth opened and closed several times, like a gulping fish, before she shut it with a snap.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, with enough of a chill in her voice to freeze water. “I think you’re mistaken. There is no antagonism toward you. All I’m concerned with is finding my sister.”

  “So you deny that you don’t think I can help you?”

  She flicked hair out of her eyes.

  “I’m more concerned that you’re egotistical enough to transpose those feelings to insecurities you have about your own abilities.”

  “I’m not insecure.”

  “And yet you’ve read my emotional state completely wrong.”

  Sutton smiled.

  “Robin. Can I call you Robin? Don’t bullshit me. There’s things I’m good at, and things I’m not so good at. I’m perfectly willing to admit to my faults and failings; I have more than enough of both. But the one thing I am good at is reading people. You don’t like me or you don’t trust me to be able to help you. Of that I am sure. I’m just not sure which one it is.”

  “I don’t-“

  “It’s alright. I’m not demanding any submission. Only the truth. I am a man who is hungry for the truth. After all, isn’t that why you’ve asked me to help you?”

  Robin paused. She had a thoughtful look on her face.

  “Does it really matter? To you, I mean?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “But it’s kind of redundant, really. Considering I’m trying to help.”

  After a moment, Robin nodded.

  “Alright. I’m…sceptical. That’s all.”

  “Understandable. But you don’t know me. I’ve had successes, otherwise I would not have been recommended to you – in essence, I’d be out of a job very quickly.”

  “Then maybe I don’t trust the person who recommended you.”

  “Jean?”

  “Yes. She’s involved with my cousin, you know. With Sean.”

  Sutton nodded.

  “I assumed as much.”

  “Why would you assume that?”

  Sutton stared at her for a moment without speaking.

  “Because what I did for her was not something you speak about to a stranger, or even to a friend. They’d have to be intimate, for her to confess it to him.”

  “What did you do?”

  Sutton smiled. />
  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Robin looked furious in that moment, the muscles in her neck going rigid.

  “Alright,” she said. “If you want honesty, then I’ll be honest with you. It’s not you so much that offends my sensibilities as it is your type. I can read you all too easily. An overbearing father, a doting mother…this makes you adverse to authority, and charming to women. You’re a Player. As far as I’m concerned you lack commitment, probably to anything in your life. When I first saw you in the museum, do you know what I was thinking? I was thinking, why is he sketching in a £200 suit jacket? Unfortunately, I’m well acquainted with your sort, Mr. Mills. I’m concerned that very little resides in you beyond the surface. Your pretensions to intellect, to serious thought, are only that: pretensions. Women like you, I’ll bet. But I very much doubt that you could appeal to a woman beyond your own type.”

  “And what type would that be?”

  “I’m sure you know what I mean. A flaxen haired doll who can fill out a bra.”

  “Right.”

  “But none of that matters. What you are…Well, it can help us find Andrea. I’m told you’re good with people; I can see how that would be the case. And…I’m glad of that. But I just need to know that you’re not a…I don’t know…a peacock. That you can do more than just strut around and look interesting. I need you to do what you say you can do. Do you understand me? I don’t have any time for pretensions. My sister doesn’t have any time for pretensions.”

  Sutton nodded.

  “I understand. And despite what you think of me, I’ll do absolutely everything I can to find your sister, Robin. You have my word on that.”

  Robin nodded, but for a moment her bottom lip trembled.

  “Good. That’s all I ask.”

  *

  Sean stared at the body.

  She had been dumped at the base of the steps to the church, almost on the pavement. This seemed like the final sacrilege, the last insult. The ultimate denial of this young woman’s right to existence.

  It was the worst one yet. Her entire torso was a mess, as if she had been beaten or burnt…or both.