Her husband must have got to her. That’ll be it. Where’s the husband? Don’t see the husband. Just women. Maybe the husband locked us all in here. He’s off somewhere now, another part of the building or the house or wherever we are. Getting a cup of tea, going to the toilet. That’ll be it. Kill someone, break for tea, kill someone else.
That doesn’t make sense.
Look around you. Look!
There are just three women here, that’s all. One bound, one dead, one free.
One free. A killer, Tony Blair or anyone else, would not have wandered off leaving one of his potential victims sitting happily on a chair, unbound.
Like I couldn’t have seen this coming.
I’m waking up now, waking up.
Joy to the fucking world!
The minister. Jesus, it’s always the minister. Seriously. The minister or the priest. They’ve got this respectable cover, under which they can do whatever the fuck they want. Same thing happened here a few years ago with the last fucking guy, or some fucking guy, maybe not the last minister. But a minister. A fucking minister. All that God crap, and they use it as camouflage.
I have a million questions. I think I do. I mean, I should have a million questions after all. And yet, now that I have the perpetrator here, assuming the one person in the room neither bound nor dead is the perpetrator, the first question that emerges, as she and I look each other in the eye, is, ‘What?’
She’s leaning forward, feet planted squarely on the ground, legs at ninety, forearms resting on her thighs, glass of vodka or gin or water or something in her hand. Let’s assume vodka, it’ll suit narrative consistency.
‘What?’ she says, mimicking my question, rather than asking what I mean.
‘Got any more of that?’ I ask.
She lifts the glass, asking if that’s what I meant, and I nod.
She has no blood on her tunic. That’s impressive. She’s wearing a white tunic, she slashed the absolute shit out of poor Blair here, and yet, not a drop made it onto her white top. God, if that was me, I’d look like a butcher.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she says. ‘Ironic, really.’
‘Why?’
‘I offered it to you a couple of nights ago. You didn’t want it. Now that your body’s full of GHB, and I’m guessing, you already had too much to drink, and I’m thinking you’re going to be a borderline basketcase, now you want it? Seems ironic. Anyway, you’re not getting any.’
I glance at Kallas, head at an awkward angle, no sign that the sound of conversation might stir her into consciousness.
‘So, what’s happening?’ I ask.
I could really use that drink.
Goodbody laughs, takes another glug from the glass, the way her face briefly contorts indicates she’s drinking it neat, shakes her head.
‘I just killed Mrs Blair here. Kind of pointless now, really. She deserved it after all, they all did, but now...’ and she indicates Kallas, and she indicates me, then she takes another drink, this time unable to lower the glass until she’s drained it, then she sets the glass down on the floor, beside the bottle.
‘Where’s her husband?’
She holds my gaze, looks troubled by the question, lowers her eyes, face a haunted scowl.
‘He’s dead,’ is all she says.
Silence.
This woman is as damaged as I am. We would make a perfect couple.
‘What’s the plan?’
‘Now look, Detective Genius Boy, I’m not getting into some Poirot, Scooby Doo type of shit, where I confess everything. She’s dead, her husband’s dead, the others are dead, now you’re about to be dead.’
She looks at Kallas.
‘I have no idea what I’m going to do with her, she’s not supposed to be here.’
‘Why am I?’
She’s got the duct tape in her hand now. Seems she’s keen to shut me up. This is where I’m supposed to think of something brilliant to say to stay her hand, to keep me and Kallas alive, until I can pull the great escape from the bag.
Something brilliant...
‘Why am I supposed to be here?’ I ask again, as it’s all I’ve got. I don’t like the quality of desperation in my voice. Not a good sound.
‘You killed someone, didn’t you, Sergeant? All these people, with their cavalier ways, their cavalier attitudes, with their careless and casual arrogance. Just a virus, just the flu, it won’t affect me, and it won’t affect you. Harry Lord killing his father, wiping out the people in the home, and Cowal... he might as well have put a knife in his wife’s heart... Round and round we go. That bloody woman with her malicious social media shit, and poor Gill here... She knew Cowal was infected, she kept on keeping on, couldn’t stop herself. Couldn’t say no.’ A beat. Her face drops, eyes deaden. ‘Did she kill anyone? I don’t actually know. But she... she was the problem. Her, and her type. Didn’t care. Thought they’d be fine, and huzzah for them, they were fine. Nothing to worry about. But how many people did they infect along the way?’
She’s just talking, and talking – so much for wanting to avoid the Scooby Doo situation! – though there’s not much more to say, the words blending into the room, the stark, pale room, with plain walls and nothing to live for, and I’m included in this, and I know why I’m included, but she shouldn’t know, she really shouldn’t. How can she?
‘How?’ I say, interrupting her. I don’t know the last thing she said.
I need to talk about this, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to think about it, because thinking about it makes me want to vomit. And it makes me want to drink myself to death, which is what I’ve been trying to do for the last two and a half months. And I would have done, if my fucking body didn’t keep rebelling, spewing forth the invading alcohol at will.
She looks at me, almost pityingly, then she steps forward, stretches out the tape with a smack, and wraps it quickly around my mouth, back of the head, back round again a couple of times.
‘Can’t have you screaming,’ she says.
‘How?’ comes crying from my lips, but there’s nothing bar the dull, anguished grunt from deep in my throat, and then she’s placed the duct tape on the ground, and she’s lifted the knife, and without even thinking about it, without pausing, without calculating, she inserts the point of the knife in my shoulder, deep, then pulls it down and out, cutting the skin, while the blood oozes, and then flows.
Another useless grunt.
‘Your buddy here really fucked this up,’ says Goodbody. ‘She wasn’t supposed to be here, she wasn’t supposed to walk in on me when I went to get this one. I don’t want to have to kill her. I don’t want that. God doesn’t want it. Hah!’
Head shaking, she turns away. Jesus, if she’s going to give me a thousand cuts at this rate... holy shit.
‘Fuck it,’ she barks from nowhere, then she turns back to me, squeezes the knife in behind the tape, with one harsh sweep she cuts it, and then she yanks it painfully away from my mouth, and this time my gasping groan is much louder.
‘Tell me,’ she says, and I can feel the blood on my cheek, the pain of the tape still fresh. ‘Tell me,’ she repeats, and she presses the edge of the knife against my forehead, just above my right eye.
‘What?’
‘Why you’re here, Sergeant. Go on, tell me why you’re here, you selfish, drunken fuck.’
I swallow. The thought of it, of why I’m here, is much worse than the knife and the cuts and the tape ripped across an unshaven face.
She leans in towards me, presses the knife harder so that it breaks the skin, and now her face is contorted with hatred.
‘Tell me now, tell the fucking world, or I’ll do to your face what I did to Malone, and first of all I wake up your friend here, and she’ll have to watch, and she’ll have to listen to you screaming.’
Close my eyes. Don’t make me do this. Just fuck off. Leave me alone. Let me die. Stab me. Drive that knife into me. That’ll do, Donkey, that’ll fucking do. Come on
!
‘Just stab me, you coward.’
‘Hah!’
‘Stab me, come on. Do it properly. Just kill someone for once, instead of all this affected thousand cuts bullshit. Come on!’
‘Fuck off, Sergea –’
‘Come on!’
‘Tell me what you did!’ she shouts, and with it she flicks the knife, and it cuts a line across my forehead.
‘Just fucking do it!’
‘Tell me what you did!’ again, and this time she slashes the knife across my face, and blood spurts, and now, now, she’s got blood on her white tunic, the bitch.
‘Come on!’ I shout, straining at the bonds, and God I wish I could be free. I’d grab that fucking knife and stab myself with it and save her the trouble. ‘Come on, you bitch! Come on!’
‘What did you do?’ she yells, and she slashes the knife across my thigh, and I wince and cry out, an ugly, loud sound, filled with the pain of the cut, and the pain of what she wants me to say.
‘What did you do?’ Knife jabbed into my leg.
‘What did you do?’ Knife into the leg.
‘What did you do?’ Again.
‘What did you do?’ Again.
‘Fuuuuuck!’
‘What did you do!’ at a scream, again the knife, the point left in this time, then dramatically whipped out. Blood spurts.
‘Fuuuuuck!’
‘What did you do?’ Another quick jab, higher up the thigh. ‘What did you do?’ Jab. ‘What did you do?’ Jab.
And finally, finally...
‘I killed him!’ comes screaming from contorted lips.
46
Blood covering my legs, pain shooting through my body, sweating, heart racing, blood in my mouth, blood in my mouth?, must have run in from my cheek, or maybe I’ve bitten my tongue or my cheek, the taste of it melding with the taste of sick, and now finally she pulls away, slumping down into the seat opposite, leaning forward, breathing hard, elbows on her knees, bloody knife held in hot, limp hands.
She lets the silence grow, lets the drama of the last minute subside, the pause before the next explosion of action or sound or confession. An explosion of confession. That’s a moment in which we all belong.
I’m breathing hard, head down, gasps of air taken in through bloody pain, waiting for the endorphins to kick or for something to kick in, or maybe I just need to rile her more. She’s already deviated from her normal practice, maybe I can get her to just hurry the fuck up. Get this all over with.
‘How do you know?’ comes uncomfortably from my mouth.
She watches me for a moment, leans back, lifts the bottle, takes a long swig of vodka, more or less thumps the bottle back down on the floor, steadies it, then once again leans forward into the silence.
Eventually...
‘You told me,’ she says, voice steady and slow. A beat. ‘You confessed.’
‘No.’
Wince, as another shard of pain from my leg suddenly decides to race through me, as though the knife had just been thrust into it once more.
‘No,’ I force out again.
‘For God’s sake. No one... not one of you will admit it, will you? You all want to think you played no part, as though this virus spreads itself. As though the virus doesn’t spread because people are selfish. But you, Sergeant, you know what you did, and that is some fantasy you’ve created to protect yourself. It’s not working out too well for you though, is it?’
She holds my gaze, a malicious look, contemptuous, then she leans forward and swipes the blade suddenly across my knee, the cut shallow and painful.
‘Fuck!’
‘Tell me about DCI Taylor,’ she says, and my contorted, bitter and twisted face falls, and the hurt of it, the hurt of the name, the hurt of her knowing, the hurt of her using it, beating me with it, torturing me with it, is worse than the jabbing, screaming pains in my legs.
‘Tell me!’
‘You said I already confessed,’ I manage to squeeze meagrely, abjectly from my lips.
‘You talked about him as though he was still alive. That’s what you do. That’s how you think. But you know, you know that I know he’s dead. I took his funeral for God’s sake.’ I can’t lift my eyes to her. ‘That, then, was your confession. The pretence wasn’t about being unable to live without your beloved former boss. It was guilt. Guilt that the chief inspector died of Covid, guilt that you might have given it to him. How does anyone really know where they got it from? But you... you think you passed it on to him, don’t you?’
Bile rises up my throat, the tears rise in my eyes. They both stall, and the dry sob belches uncontrollably from my lips.
‘Do you know you gave it to him?’
Nothing in the question but scorn. I don’t answer.
‘Do you know?’ she spits out.
‘Of course not,’ I spit back.
‘But you had symptoms and you came to work, and you didn’t... give... a fuck who you hurt.’
Sounds formulate in my mouth, but I have no words, and all that comes is an anguished cry.
‘Jesus, you people. All the fucking same.’
She stands up quickly, pushing her chair back, taking a step or two away. Then she bends, lifts the vodka, takes a swig, pauses, another, then settles the bottle back down.
She turns now, regards me with the same look she’s held for the past few minutes.
‘We are kindred spirits, Sergeant,’ she says. ‘I suppose you’d like me to finish you off quickly.’
Stare at the floor, sweat and blood and fuck knows what else runs off my face.
‘Do what you fucking want,’ forces its way out.
Feeling tired all of a sudden. Wait, wait, that wound in my leg, the worst one, the one that hosed, it’s still pulsing blood. Slowly now, but it’s coming, and it’s not the only one. Ha! I’m bleeding out. Hallelujah! I’m bleeding out, you fucker!
‘Maybe I want to cut up your little friend here,’ she says. ‘How d’you feel about th –’ She laughs, laughs in my face, as my head shoots up, a darting glance at Kallas, before turning quickly back to Goodbody. ‘Ooh, what was that?’
Grit my teeth, lips clamped shut, nothing to be done about the malice shooting from my eyes.
‘That wasn’t just not wanting to lose another boss. That was... do you have a thing for your inspector, here? Do you, Sergeant? How romantic. The drunken, wasted piece of shit sergeant has a crush on the girl. Well, well, well... we’re practically in a Doris Day movie.’
I can’t look at her. Can’t look at Kallas either. How easily I betray myself. So I stare at the floor, inept and bleeding and condemned.
‘Cat got your tongue, eh? Well, here we are, in a fine pickle.’ She picks up the vodka, drinks, settles back to stare at me. ‘I didn’t really know what to do with the girl, to be honest. Stumbled into each other when I was taking care of this clown and her husband. Had to bring her along. Obviously, I can’t let her live, but... I don’t know anything about her. No reason to inflict particular punishment. Now, however, now that the sergeant has shown his hand...’
‘Leave her alone.’
‘Ha!’
‘Leave her!’
‘Such desperation. How sweet. How loyal. Do you love her, Sergeant? Do you? That would be very, very romantic.’
Close my eyes, face tensed, bracing against the pain and the moment.
‘I asked you a question, Chipper,’ she says, and her voice is much closer, and when I open my eyes, her face is only a few inches from mine. ‘I asked you a question, Chipper,’ she repeats.
‘Fuck off.’
She jabs her finger into the open wound in my shoulder, moves it around inside, as the tortured howl comes roaring from my throat.
‘What d’you think, Chipper? I asked a simple question, that’s all. Easy enough to answer, isn’t it? A simple yes or no will do. No need for us to be uncivil, is there?’
She pulls her finger out of the wound, suddenly, brutally, and I yelp with the pain of it, and
then there’s instant relief that her finger’s not there anymore, but still the gnawing, nagging, underlying hurt of the invasion of the wound, and the word ‘fuck’ escapes my lips, and she says, ‘Let’s do that again!’ with the mock enthusiasm of a children’s TV presenter.
‘Yes!’ I cry, ‘Yes, I love her, Jesus!’
‘Ha!’
‘Happy? Just... just let her go.’
‘Really, Chip? Really? This isn’t some kind of science fiction bullshit. I can’t erase her memory. She’s dying.’
I struggle hopelessly against the bonds, and then, because it’s all I can do, and I’m so full of anger, I spit blood across the short distance, onto her already stained white blouse.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she mutters, head shaking, then she takes another mouthful of vodka, barely seeming to even notice the latest bloody mark on her top.
‘I’ve got nothing against her,’ says Goodbody. ‘I mean, fuck, I don’t know her. But you, Sergeant. You’re the problem. You, and all the rest like you. You brought so many people, so many families, so many businesses and institutions to their knees, because you were a selfish... fuck,’ and she spits the last word. ‘You’re a selfish fuck.’
‘Kill me then! Just do it!’
Another drink, bottle tipped far back, coming to the end. God, she’s got guts of steel.
‘Your girlfriend’s going first. You get to watch.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Thought you might enjoy it. Tell you what, I’ll give you a thrill. I’ll undress her for you. I’m guessing what we have here is one of those unrequited things that people make movies about, so you two won’t have, you know... You’re not going to have banged the boss, and certainly not after what you did to the last one. I mean, you really fucked him, right?’
Can’t even bring myself to ejaculate a profanity towards her.
Now, for the first time since I’ve woken up here, she turns her attention to Kallas, who has sat unmoving and unconscious throughout. Goodbody leans forward, elbows on her knees again, knife held loosely in her fingers.
She studies Kallas for a while, watching her breathe. I become aware that the only sound is my own heavy, gasping breaths, the drip of blood from my legs to the carpet.
In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5 Page 26
