by J G Alva
“I know. It’s tough.” A pause. “I’ve got something for you. A job. If you can tear yourself away, that is.”
Fin sat forward in his seat, interested.
“What?”
“There’s money in it, if you want.”
“Sure. What is it?”
Another pause.
“I need you to take a look and see what kind of historical appreciation societies there are running in the Bristol area. You know. National Heritage, things like that.”
“What are you looking for? I mean, specifically?”
“Members lists,” Sutton said. “Names, and addresses, if you can get them.”
“Okay. Can I ask why?”
“I’ll tell you why, but not right now,” Sutton said. He cleared his throat. “How much do you think you can get for me in an hour?”
“Why? What’s happening in an hour?”
“That’s when I’m picking you up.”
“Oh. Right.” Fin looked around. He was starting to think this place was the seventh circle of hell. “Well. I can probably get away. But can we make it two hours? I’ll have more for you by then.”
“Okay. But we need to move fast on this one. Get everything you can and I’ll meet you in two hours.”
“Two hours. Got it. College Green.”
“What?”
“Pick me up by the library on College Green.”
“Alright. I’ll see you there.”
Fin hung up and then put the phone back in his pocket. He felt the excitement tickling in all his limbs.
At that moment, a shadow fell over him and he looked up.
The nurse with the teeth smiled down at him, the smile a little warmer this time. Once again, he thought that she’d be real pretty if it wasn’t for all those criss-crossing teeth jostling for position inside her mouth.
“Mr. Henk? The doctor will see you now.”
Fin stood up.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”
The nurse frowned; this wasn’t in the script.
“Mr. Henk, that’s a nasty cut on your forehead-“
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said, moving passed her. “It probably looks worse than it is.”
“Mr. Henk, you should really get a doctor to take a look at that cut-“
“I will,” Fin said, smiling and nodding, but moving inexorably toward the door. “As soon as I’m done, I will. But thanks anyway.”
It felt good to be leaving that damn place.
*
Sutton hung up his mobile and put it back in his pocket.
Sean said, “who was that?”
“A friend,” Sutton said. “He’s got a knack. You want something found out, then he can put his hands on it almost straight away. And he’s good at getting information out of people. People trust him. Probably because he’s so unthreatening. He’s twenty two, but he looks like he’s sixteen.” He looked at Robin. “And he’s smart. Women love him. They want to mother him. It’s almost like they have no defence against him. It’s…strange.”
“Alright,” Sean said. “By the way, we got a match on the dental records for the third victim. Her name was Helen Allen. She was a student at the university, studying English Literature. She was nineteen.”
Robin sat up and hugged herself, staring at Sean but saying nothing. Sutton knew what she was thinking: it could have been her. In another life. Her face twisted as if some deep inner turmoil was pushing at her features to get out.
Sutton said, “was the cause of death decapitation?”
“Not this time, no,” Sean said. “It was the extensive burns all over her body that killed her.”
There was silence a moment while they all thought about that.
“Well, there’s two things we can do,” Sutton said, looking at Robin, then at Sean. “I think Mike was holding something back. I’d like to go back and talk to him. On my own.”
Sutton gave Sean a look until he had understood, and he nodded to indicate that he had; he wouldn’t want to be a party to whatever Sutton would have to do to get the whole truth from Mike.
“And Ellie,” Sutton said. He looked at Robin. “She told us that Jessica got this man – if it’s the same guy we’re looking for – by herself, but Jessica told us that he was referred to her by Ellie. Jessica seemed more real to me-“
“She did,” Robin confirmed.
“-And I’ve never trusted Ellie. She has a long standing career with wearing different faces, and we saw only one when we visited her.” He shook his head. “We’ll try Manilla Road again, see if she’s home yet.” He shook his head again; Sean’s revelations about the state of her finances were still bothering him.
“Okay,” Sean said. “Unless you need me, I’m going to stay here to work the crime scene. I’ll call you when I have anything new. Uh…” Sean looked awkward in that moment. He looked at Robin. “Can I have a word with Sutton a moment? Alone?”
“Why?”
“Come on, Robin. It’s man talk.”
Robin stared at him, and then without a word she got to her feet and walked until she was twenty feet away, and stood there, staring out at the river, her arms cupping her elbows, her pose stiff with unhappiness. She was a portrait of disgruntlement, wrought in real life.
They both stared at her until Sutton said, “what?”
Sean watched his cousin for some moments in silence.
“I wouldn’t ask you to persuade her to stay at home, you’d be wasting your breath,” Sean said. “But can you look out for her for me?”
“Of course,” Sutton said. “It’s what I’ve been doing.”
Sean nodded.
“She looks like a zombie.”
“She’s carrying this around as if it’s her own problem,” Sutton said. “As if it’s her fault.”
Sean nodded, as if he already knew it.
“She always was highly strung,” he said. He gave Sutton a sidelong glance. “People think she’s cold but she’s not. She’s just gotten good at controlling her emotions. She’s gotten everything battened down so tight…” He shook his head.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why is everything battened down so tight?”
Sean was thoughtful for a moment.
“It’s nothing for you to worry about.” He paused. “It’s nothing to do with this. But I should probably let her tell you. If she wants to.”
“Right.”
“But…watch out for her. I’m worried she’s going to blow a gasket.”
“I think she’s too tough for that,” Sutton said, admiring the lines of her figure from this distance. They were good lines.
He made himself look away. He was getting to like the look of her far too much.
“Yeah. I suppose. But she’s had about eight hours sleep in the last five days, and that’s enough to weaken anyone’s resources. So watch out for her. And I’ll call you, the moment I have anything else.”
*
Robin walked beside Sutton as they made their way across Level One of the Galleries multi-storey car park back to her car.
Everything had the slight surreal quality of a dream. God, she was tired. She could not remember ever feeling this tired before.
“So what were you and Sean talking about?” She asked.
Sutton debated.
“Well…”
“Was he giving you the ‘look after my cousin’ speech?” She said, and then seeing the not quite concealed confirmation on his face, she said, “great. Man talk. He is such a patronising shit.”
Sutton made a face.
“He’s just worried about you, that’s all.”
“We haven’t got time to worry about me-“
“Of course we have. What would probably be best would be for-“
Sutton’s mobile rang, and after a puzzled look at her, he scooped it out of his pocket. He looked at her as he spoke.
“Michelle? What-“
A pause.
“Wait, wait, w
here are you? Michelle?”
Sutton listened, and as he did so his face darkened, a scowl forming, the muscles in his jaw tightening, his shoulders coming up.
“Just get off that road, just get-“
He stopped.
“Michelle? Michelle?”
He checked his phone.
“Michelle?”
He looked at his phone again, and then held his other hand out toward her. He put his phone in his pocket.
“Give me your keys,” he said.
“I’ll drive-“
“I don’t have time to argue,” he barked. All civility had been stripped from him; Robin had the sense that all his good manners and consideration had been pretensions, and this was the real Sutton, an animal, no friendship, no loyalty, just a wild creature that chose to behave only how it wanted to. “Just give me the fucking keys.”
Robin fished them out of her handbag and passed them to him, and he crossed to her parked car, got in, started it up and then began backing out of the parking space.
Robin felt abandoned; what was going on? Was he going to leave her here?
Sutton stopped the car, leaned over and opened the front passenger door.
“Get in,” he said urgently,
She clambered in.
“Where are we going?”
“There’s no time. I’ll tell you on the way.”
Sutton roared out of the multi-storey car park.
*
“Tell me what’s going on, Sutton,” Robin said.
Sutton was on the dual carriageway just behind the police station, heading into the centre. He was driving as if there was no time…and when he hit the traffic lights in front of the bus lane he ignored them, after a quick look a the traffic coming from the right through the one way system. Robin heard several car horns blaring at them. She was clutching both the handrail above her head and the seatbelt across her midriff with panicky tightness. She had thought she was too tired to feel any more afraid.
She was wrong.
“Sutton-“
“About sixteen months ago a man came to me, asking for help,” Sutton said, and then paused as he swerved from one lane to the next to avoid a line of cars. The Hippodrome passed by on their right in a blur. “The month before, his daughter had been attacked, near the traffic lights behind Cabot Circus. She had been sitting in her brand new silver Vauxhall Astra TwinTop – a present from her father – when a guy in a car in the next lane over leaned out and threw acid over her face.”
Traffic was too heavy for Sutton to get passed at the lights at the bottom of Park Street, but he persisted, nudging the car further into the traffic until the others cars were simply forced to let him through. Robin saw a lot of angry faces, heard a lot of shouting, more car horns beeping.
He put more speed on as he raced up Park Street.
“This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened: two other people had been attacked by the same man, had acid thrown over them in the months previous. The police knew about it, but didn’t have any suspects. So I said I’d see what I could do.”
Robin’s eyes were locked on the road ahead of them, her body braced for the impact she knew must come, if he continued to drive like this.
They went through one set of traffic lights, which luckily were already on green, at the top of the hill and shot through another set, opposite the City Museum and Art Gallery, that had only seconds before turned red.
“What has this got to do with-“
“Listen. I found him. His name was Terry Ryder. Short, skinhead, frantic, nuts. He got his kicks from scarring pretty women.” Sutton swung the car down the hill and then took a right, up the steep Constitution Hill, toward Clifton. The engine screamed under the bonnet. Her poor little car… “He was convicted two weeks ago.”
A car was coming the other way, too fast, and Sutton barely had time to swerve out of the way, a hollow bang coming from underneath her car as he mounted the curb, and something banging again when he came down off it at speed. Her car.
“Sutton…” Robin moaned.
“Fucking idiot,” Sutton said, looking back over his shoulder briefly, before taking the curve halfway up the hill at breakneck speed.
“The man who asked me to help find his daughter’s attacker was John Rutherford. That was his daughter that just called me: Michelle.”
“What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” Sutton said, racing through the tangled streets of Clifton. “She said she was being followed.” Sutton looked over at her, his eyes hollow. “By a Renault Clio.”
Robin was shocked.
“What? By the Renault Clio that’s been following us? That hit us?”
“It’s got to be, hasn’t it.”
“But who-“
“I don’t know,” Sutton said, and then they were on the road to the Suspension bridge.
Sutton pushed the car harder.
*
The Clifton Suspension Bridge – or the Brunel Suspension Bridge, as it is sometimes referred to – is half a mile of tarmac and cables that connect one side of Avon Gorge to the other. It’s over a hundred and fifty years old, is a Grade one listed structure, and is a favourite for tourists and those people whose desperation has set them on a course with only one conclusion: a long fall to a wet doom.
The gorge runs for about two miles from Bristol to Avonmouth, where the river Avon finally meets the sea, but it is at the Bristol end that the cliffs are the steepest. On the far side of the gorge the slope is gradual, and home to protected flora and fauna that can only be found in this part of the country; on the Bristol side, the gorge is a sheer descent three hundred feet to the muddy river below.
There was a crowd of about a dozen people near the Toll Houses on the bridge, and Sutton squealed to a stop behind them. He got out. He tried to gather his thoughts but they were everywhere, like a flock of startled geese.
He ran toward the crowd.
Before he could get through them, he thought he could smell burning, and then he was pushing passed people, and once he was through, he felt the heat, and feared the worst.
Two cars were on the bridge. Closest to him, parked at an angle in front of him, was a Renault Clio…the Renault Clio, the one that had been following them, the one that had driven into the back of his car only that morning.
Beyond it, its front right tire hanging over the edge of the bridge, was another car: Michelle’s new Mini Cooper. It was not in danger of going over, as the wall along the edge of the bridge had only given away enough to allow the front right side of the car through; bricks and mortar lay in a pile beneath it. But the car was on fire. A trail of flames licked greedily along the bonnet, along the front passenger side door and the roof.
And someone was inside.
Michelle.
Standing between the two cars, holding the crowd back with a can of lighter fluid and a cigarette lighter, was Terry Ryder’s mother, Mary.
She looked insane, had probably gone insane. Despite her son’s lunacy, she loved him irrevocably – her passionate rants in and outside Bristol Crown Court had been testament to that – but his conviction had obviously snapped something in her…and she had made it clear on more than one occasion that she thought both Michelle and Sutton were responsible for her son’s downfall. That was why she had been following Sutton around Bristol, waiting for the right moment to exact her revenge. She had probably thought she would do more damage when she had smashed his car. But when that hadn’t worked, she had gone for an easier target.
Michelle.
Mary Ryder saw Sutton at the same time as he came through to the other side of the crowd.
“You!” She screamed, her neck red, the tendons standing out like battery cables. She was a short dark haired woman in her late forties, but now she looked ancient and terrifying, like an old witch possessed by evil spirits. “You can fucking watch her burn!” Mary Ryder shouted in a cracked voice full of jubilation and triumph. “You can watch her
descend into the fires of hell, you fuck! You want to take my son away from me! You want to take my son! Well, fuck you! Fuck you!”
Michelle.
He had to get to her.
Sutton did not remember making a decision, could not remember coming up with a plan of action, but the next thing he knew, he was scrabbling over the bonnet of the Renault Clio. He saw Mary Ryder’s eyes go wide with the realisation of his intent, and as he jumped from the bonnet of the Clio he saw the squeeze bottle of lighter fluid come round toward him. He had enough time to put his left arm up before she sprayed him with it, and then he was on her, there was sudden heat, he could smell the burning, she screamed once, a powerful cracked bray of outrage and anger; he barrelled into her, pushing her back, until something solid took her legs out from behind her, and he wasn’t holding anything any more.
She was over the wall.
She screamed, falling backward.
He was on fire.
He looked at his sleeve dumbly for a moment, at the flames dancing over it.
There were also flames on the front of his jumper.
He brushed at them frantically as he moved to Michelle’s car. Jesus, how was he supposed to get her out? The flames were all over her car now, and the driver’s side door was wedged against the wall along the edge of the bridge.
Sutton stripped off his singed jumper and then began to beat at the flames. It quickly became evident however that this was not doing any good, so then he wrapped the jumper around his hand and reached down for the door handle to the front passenger door, his other arm shielding his face from the heat of the flames.
“Michelle!”
He opened the door, the handle burning his fingers even through the protective covering of the jumper.
“Come on!” He shouted, and the dim blur of her shape came toward him, and he dragged her out of the car, his arm tight around her middle, and he pulled her away from it, her feet dragging on the floor, until she was able to get her feet under her, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and walking with her, led her out from between the two cars and around to the other side of the Renault Clio.
