Tattoo

by J G Alva

  She made a kah sound, kind of like a cough. Her hands sought to free his, but to no avail. He watched with interest as the veins and tendons in her neck above and below his grip on her seemed to bunch and swell as his hold got tighter, and tighter, and tighter.

  Her eyes knew. They bulged wide with the knowledge of her impending doom. The ultimate revelation. The ultimate truth. That he was not a little boy…and yet he was still that little boy. Her flailing arms began to twitch spasmodically, as if shaking off a fly, and the ripples spread through the rest of her body, like a virus.

  “I fucked up your life!” He screamed, spit flying from his mouth. Some part of him realised that he had gone mad, absolutely insane, it was like everything he was had been unleashed in that moment. Another part of him seemed to look on with clinical interest. He felt as if he was capable of anything, as if he owned the world, and could taste whatever he wanted of it. Here, in his hands, he held the chains to his freedom…and he was breaking them. He shook his mother like a rag doll. “I fucked up your life! Oh Mother! Oh Mother! You fucked up mine! You fucked up mine so much more!”

  *

  When he was done, he let her body drop back across the kitchen table.

  He stumbled back against the wall, not sure if he was disturbed by what he had done…or disturbed by how wonderful it had felt to do it.

  He took a moment to look at her.

  He realised he had never seen her like this before. Peaceful. He almost didn’t recognise her face without the hate in it, it was so different.

  And she had lied for him. It was hard to believe, as he couldn’t remember the last good thing she had done for him. Sutton Mills. Who was he? He was ahead of the game, that much was clear, but he was in danger of ending it before it was finished. And Guy wanted to finish it, needed to finish it; it was, after all, his life’s work.

  He would have to see what he could do about him.

  He went around the table and opened the drawers under the sink, pulled out the one on the left and dug out the carving knife.

  Brandishing the knife, he turned back to her. Eleanor Mason. The face of so many nightmares. But he would sleep soundly tonight. He expected her to be watching him, but of course she wasn’t. She was really dead then. He felt surprised at that, as if he had thought she would live forever. But then again, didn’t all children feel like that about their parents?

  Not that she was any kind of a real mother. It was all well and good getting sad like this, but he had to remember what she was really like. The most incredibly evil bitch that there ever was.

  “Nag, nag, nag,” he said, and leaning over her, got to work.

  *

  CHAPTER 13

  “Fuck,” Sutton said, after banging on the door again, loud enough for Robin to hear him in her car across the street.

  It was getting late. Even though there was still light in the sky, it was overcast enough to bring the street lights into flickering, hesitant life. The night would be a cold one, Robin thought.

  “What?” She called out.

  Sutton stepped back from the shabby row of houses, tilting his head back; Robin assumed he was checking the windows for any sign of life.

  But the house remained silent and empty.

  He went back to the house, cupping his hands to the windows and peering in, but when he found nothing he shook his head and turning, ran back across the street to her.

  He climbed into the front passenger seat.

  “He must be out,” he said, still staring passed her at the house.

  “What do all these different people find to do on a Monday in March,” she said, with no trace of humour at all in her voice. She reached down to start the car. “Maybe he thought you might come back.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You must have made quite an impression.”

  Sutton glanced at her.

  “It’s my diction.”

  “Of course it is. What do you want to do now?”

  “Well. We can always come back and see Mike later, if we have to.” Sutton looked at his watch. “And we don’t have to meet Fin for another half hour. For now, let’s try Ellie again.”

  *

  The house on Manilla Road was just as uninhabited as the last time they had visited, as unresponsive as the broken shell of Mike Ruffall’s home.

  “No luck?” She called out from where she had squeezed in across the road.

  Sutton shook his head.

  The street was quiet.

  There was a trapped feeling about Manilla Road. The houses were big, but the streets were narrow, and with cars lining each curb, there was hardly room to drive between them. Robin could feel everything closing in, and it was a struggle to make the muscles in her back and shoulders relax. She looked at her watch. Andrea, we’re trying. Just hang on. Hang on for me.

  As Sutton came down the old stone steps to join her at the curb, he took out his mobile phone and dialled.

  He only had to wait a moment before it was answered.

  “Sean? Yeah. No, not yet. Listen. You remember when we were at Mike’s place, and he had a visitor? And you took down the license plate? Well, I need you to see what you can find out from it. Mike’s not in and we’re running out of time. And another thing: I want you to dig deeper on Eleanor Mason. What? No, I just…I don’t know. I have a feeling. You said she doesn’t own any other properties, but…you should see inside her house. It’s full up with electronic goodies, and the furniture’s not cheap. And everything I’ve ever heard about her is that she’s loaded. She even told us herself that she married a rich guy, to get out of Knowle. I just don’t believe that there isn’t something we’re not missing. What?” A pause. “Okay.” Sutton looked at his watch again as he listened to the phone. “We’re going to go and meet Fin now at the library, see if he’s found anything we can use. Call me as soon as you have any information. We need this quick, Sean. It’s getting tight.”

  Sutton hung up and got into the car.

  He looked at Robin, and she felt his penetrating gaze bore into her. If you were in a relationship with Sutton Mills, she thought, it would be hard to keep secrets from him. He wouldn’t allow it.

  But of course, why would you want to?

  It would be a powerful feeling, to get lost in Sutton Mills.

  “Are you okay?” He asked.

  It was the compassion in his voice that brought a lump to her throat, because she wasn’t, she felt old and used and hopeless, but she fought this emotion, wouldn’t allow how she was feeling to show on her face, and she concentrated hard on pushing it to the back of her head, into its proper rooms.

  Finally, she said, “I’m okay, thank you.”

  Sutton nodded, but his eyes were concerned.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and see what Fin has for us.”

  *

  Robin watched Fin run cross the road to where they waited in her car.

  He was a tall, gangling youth, all knees and elbows under faded jeans, a blue jumper, white t-shirt and dark grey jacket. A knitted blue and green scarf trailed out behind him from around his neck like a knight’s banner.

  He looked young enough to still be in school.

  He bundled himself into the back of her car with a sigh, slightly out of breath. In his arms were books and loose sheets of paper, which he let fall onto the back seat beside him.

  “What happened to your eye?” Sutton asked, turned in his seat to face him.

  Fin touched his brow as if he had forgotten about his injury until that very moment. His eyes flicked to Robin, and he seemed uncertain in that moment.

  “Oh. A library attendant. She said I was making too much noise. They’re so strict.”

  Sutton rolled his eyes, but he was amused.

  “Right.”

  “Library attendants,” Fin said, and smiled at Robin. “You know, they’ve always got Hitler complexes. Like a loud noise might set atoms vibrating in all the books, so that they crumble to dust.”

 
“Alright, alright,” Sutton said. “What have you got?”

  “Okay.” Fin started rifling through the papers until he found the one he was looking for. “There are two main ones, historical societies, I mean: English Heritage, and the Bristol Civic Society. English Heritage is government funded, by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport…but there’s a members list. Getting hold of it might be tricky however. You can go in through the Subject Access Request to confirm a membership, but it’s all governed by the DPA – the Data Protection Act. You want to confirm somebody’s a member, you have to produce three forms of identification: birth certificate, a driver’s license, and a utility bill, as proof of address. I’m sure there are ways around that, but you only gave me two hours, so I haven’t had chance to sniff around. You give me more time, I’ll see if there isn’t another way to go in and get what we want.”

  “Hm. What about the other one? The Bristol Civic Society?”

  “Ah.” Fin held up a finger and selected another sheet of paper. “This might be an easier nut to crack. The Bristol Civic Society is an independent, voluntary organisation. The membership fee is about £20, I think. Although you can leave a contribution in your will, if you want. Nice, huh? They basically work with the City Council to try and preserve Bristol’s heritage; I think they monitor planning applications and things like that. They’ve got a pretty extensive website, with past achievements and current projects, meetings, events, things like that. There’s also a newsletter, an e-bulletin, and they meet three times a week. There’s approximately four hundred members. The point of contact is” – he selected another sheet, read for a moment – “an Audrey Lyefield.” Fin looked up at them and smiled. “And I’ve got an appointment to see her in about forty minutes.”

  “Well,” Sutton said, glancing at Robin.

  “The question is,” Fin said, “what am I looking for? What’s going on?”

  His eyes flicked between the two of them.

  Sutton indicated Robin and said, “first, I’d better introduce you to Dr. Robin Sails. Robin, this is Finley Henk.”

  “Just call me Robin,” she said, shaking his hand.

  “Fin. Nice to meet you. You’re very pretty.”

  “Thank you, Fin.”

  “I mean, wow. Gorgeous.”

  “Well…thank you.”

  “Robin’s sister, Andrea, was abducted almost a week ago,” Sutton said. “The man responsible is a person the police have dubbed the Head Hunter…”

  Fin listened patiently as Sutton laid out all that had happened up until that point.

  Fin was quiet for some time after Sutton was done. He held his head low, staring at the pages he had in his hands as if he had done something wrong, and was ashamed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said eventually, finally meeting Robin’s eyes.

  Robin nodded but did not speak. She couldn’t let him in; she couldn’t let anyone in, it would undo her.

  “So because you think this guy has an interest in history-“

  “In local history,” Sutton corrected.

  “-You think he might be a member of one of these societies.”

  “It’s weak,” Sutton said, “but I thought it couldn’t hurt to try.”

  Fin nodded, thinking.

  “So what do we know about him?” He asked. “Do we know anything?”

  Sutton pulled a face.

  “Almost nothing. We have a very brief, very general description. Mid-twenties, we think. Tall, with short cut blonde hair. Drives a white Ford Transit Van.”

  Fin nodded, committing it to memory.

  At that moment, Sutton’s mobile phone rang.

  He looked at the number on the display, grunted, and got out of the car as he answered it.

  “Go,” he said.

  “The car that we saw at Mike’s?” Sean said. “It’s registered to a Tanya Hardy, eighteen, dark hair.”

  “Sounds about right,” Sutton said, thinking back.

  “She lives with her parents in Bedminster. I’ll give you the address. She works at a Hairdressing Salon just around the corner. I got the address for that too; she might still be there at this time, so you might want to try there first. No criminal record. But her father’s an unpleasant sort of guy. He’s got a couple of convictions for GBH.”

  “You stick with what you know,” Sutton remarked.

  “What?”

  “She’d be comfortable with Mike, he’s just like her daddy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anything on Eleanor Mason?”

  “Not yet. I’m still checking.”

  “Alright. Call me when you have something. I’m with Fin, I’ve got him checking the historical angle. We need a list of members of English Heritage. Is that something you could wangle, through the MCIU?”

  “I don’t know,” Sean said. “I’ll ask.”

  “I’ll drop in on this Tanya now,” Sutton said. He looked at his watch. “I’ll see if I can find out what she knows.”

  “Okay. Sutton?”

  “Yes.”

  “Time’s running out.”

  Sutton knew it.

  “Yes,” he said, and hung up.

  He took a deep breath, stretching, looking around, and then got back in the car.

  “Hey, Sutton,” Fin said. “Is it alright if you give me a lift? This Audrey bird from the BCS lives in Mangotsfield, and no bus in Bristol is going to get me there in half an hour. Assuming one even shows up, that is.”

  *

  CHAPTER 14

  Georgina’s Salon was just closing when they pulled up outside. Robin could see three people moving around inside through the large front windows, two women and a man.

  She realised then that they were only streets away from Jessica Leonard’s house.

  Small world, she thought wryly…and yet just big enough to hide Andrea. And her abductor.

  “Stay in the car, Robin,” Sutton said, as he opened the door.

  “Sutton-“

  “Stay in the car,” he said again, harder, and once again Robin was a little afraid of him. Those eyes…

  He slammed the door, and through the windscreen she watched him walk toward the Salon.

  *

  The bell tinkled pleasantly over the door as he stepped in.

  Georgina’s was one room, tiles covering the lower half of the walls, an inoffensive beige covering the rest. In the corner a bead curtain covered an entranceway to a back room. There were four chairs in front of four long mirrors to his left, two chairs beneath industrial sized hairdryers to his right; a countertop against the back wall was home to an electronic till, multicoloured bottles of various different types of hair products, and also a sink, the coil to a hose curling out on to the floor like a metallic snake.

  The three people left in the Salon were busy with the end of the day chores. A woman in her late forties stood beside the till, counting money; her hair was short and styled up on her head, dyed blonde with dark streaks running through it; she had an orange tan, and fingers adorned with too many rings. Beside her stood a man, also in his forties, with a tired craggy face, and short cut hair shot through with grey; he wore a black t-shirt and jeans, and he was somewhat overweight; he was folding up towels.

  The other person was Tanya.

  It had to be: she had dark hair down to her back, was a little chubby, and was pretty in a kind of used, desperate way. She was wearing a short denim top over a long figure hugging black t-shirt secured with a black belt, and black leggings.

  Tanya was sweeping up the remnants of the day’s follicular harvest, cut hair like fluff being pushed about by a broom into a small mound.

  “We’re closed,” the older woman said pleasantly, having spotted him.

  “I’m here to speak to Tanya Hardy,” he said, and the young girl looked up at the mention of her name.

  “Who are you?” Tanya said, immediately on the defensive. She glanced at her employer briefly.

  “I’m a friend of Mike’s,” Sutton said, try
ing for a smile.

  She stared at him, and then shook her head. She looked angry all of a sudden.

  “Uh-uh. You aint no friend of ee. Yus that twisted fuck that visited ee this mornin’. He told I all about yus-“

  “Tanya?” Her employer seemed worried.

  There was suddenly enough tension in the room that Sutton would not have been surprised to see tendrils of electricity dancing along the countertop.

  “Where’s Mike, Tanya?” Sutton said, advancing into the room toward her.

  Tanya was backing up against the wall, holding the broom like a weapon.

  “No fuckin’ way.”

  “Tanya?” Her employer said again.

  “I need to know where he is, and I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Georgina?” Tanya said, looking at her employer, worried now.

  “I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” Georgina said to him, her eyes bright with worry. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave.”

  Sutton nodded at Tanya.

  “As soon as she tells me where Mike is, then I’ll leave.”

  “No,” Georgina said. “Either you leave right now, or I’m calling the police. So which is it going to be?”

  There was silence a moment, and then the man said, “fuck the police. I’ll kick him out.”

  Georgina said worriedly, “Frank-“ but Frank wasn’t listening; he had his heart set on a workout.

  In his day he might have been something to be afraid of, but the years had not been kind to him: he had a roll of fat around his middle, like a truck tire, and he was starting to develop a fair pair of tits. Now he just looked like a fat old man who still liked to think he was tough.

  Frank tried to grab Sutton around the collar, and Sutton quickly batted his hands away. Frank tried again, and this time Sutton bent Frank’s arm back, just enough to cause a little pain, before letting go. Frank looked unhappy. The fist came at Sutton’s face, but he was easily able to block it. He turned his hand around and locked it on Frank’s wrist, and using Frank’s own momentum, pulled him toward him, bringing him in line for the hand to his throat.