by Vince Vogel
“And you still believe it’s genuine?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, let’s hope your mates down at Scotland Yard forgive you for printing the deranged manifesto of a killer.”
“They’ll understand.”
42
Gemma Gibbs’ parents welcomed Jack into their home as though he were an old friend. While the detective sat in the lounge making a fuss of their two Jack Russell dogs, Mr. Gibbs made him a tea in the kitchen while Mrs. Gibbs sat on a couch opposite, smiling sweetly, a little sadness to her eyes.
“How long have you had them?” Jack asked as he stroked the boisterous little dogs.
“Five years,” Mrs. Gibbs replied. “We bought them for Gemma and her sister. When Gemma went missing, her flatmate brought her one back.”
“My grandson has been pestering me for a dog. He wants a Staffordshire bull terrier, but I think that’s a bit too much for a nine-year-old. I was thinking something less imposing.”
“Jack Russells are good dogs. Very energetic and in need of constant attention, but good dogs.”
Mr. Gibbs came in with the teas, laying them down on a glass coffee table before placing himself alongside his wife. He shooed the dogs and they left Jack alone, going off to separate baskets and curling up.
“So you’ve come to talk about Gemma,” Mr. Gibbs said.
Jack observed the sadness in the mother’s face deepen.
“I’m sorry I’ve got to do this,” he said.
“It’s alright. We’ve gotten much better over the years. We’ve always got each other.”
Mr. Gibbs took up one of his wife’s hands and brought it to his lips. She turned sideways and a gentle smile lit up her face. They sat frozen like that for almost a minute, gazing into each other’s eyes with sad smiles. Jack couldn’t help thinking once more about Mrs. Dyson being all alone. Losing her husband as well as her son. Left to sit by the window and grieve.
“Having skimmed over the report,” Jack went on in a delicate tone, “I noticed that the police thought perhaps Gemma had run away.”
“Ugh!” Mrs. Gibbs scoffed, turning from her husband to the detective. “She was in a bit of debt with payday loans. But then aren’t most people working minimum wage? It gets to the point where a person can’t treat themselves to a simple thing like a night on the town without borrowing the money to do it.”
“It’s tough. But Gemma’s debts were calculated at six thousand. Quite a lot for a teenage girl working at a motorway cafe. Her flatmate made a statement that said she was going to have to move back home.”
“So what? Sure, she wanted her independence, but living back with us wasn’t the end of the world. She would have had her own room. She would have had to argue over the bathroom with her sister every day and put up with her dad turning the heating off all the time, but she would have coped. It was no reason to run away.”
Mr. Gibbs leaned forward. He looked slightly aggrieved.
“My daughter was happy,” he said solemnly. “Sure, she had money troubles and it had got out of hand. Those bloody loans are a cancer on the poor and we only found out the full extent of it all after she went missing. But I’ll tell you this. My daughter did not run off without any of her clothing, any of her documentation, and with only thirty quid in her bank account. She was taken by someone and the sooner your lot get that straight, the sooner we can start getting past this by finding out who and why. Because until we have a body to mourn over or a daughter back from the dead, we’re stuck in limbo.”
He was glaring at Jack with tears in his eyes, his wife softly rubbing his back.
“I don’t think she ran away, either,” the detective said.
“You don’t?” Mrs. Gibbs squeaked.
“No. I have reason to believe that someone may have killed her.”
“Huh!” they uttered in unison, grabbing onto each other even tighter.
“And I think that the killer knew her,” Jack added.
She used to smile at me. It had bugged the detective since he’d first read the letter in Alice’s office. When did she used to smile at him?
“Did your daughter ever tell you about an admirer?” Jack asked.
“She had a boyfriend. Dan Hill,” the father said. “They interviewed the poor guy something rotten when she first went missing.”
“No. Not a boyfriend. This would have been an admirer. Perhaps someone she met through her work at the truck cafe.”
“My word!” Mrs. Gibbs let out.
“What is it?” her husband asked as he turned to her.
“The napkins I found. The ones in her folder.”
The mother got up from the sofa and told Jack to follow her. They went up a narrow staircase, then along a landing to a room. On the other side of the door stood Gemma Gibbs’ bedroom, complete with posters of various pop stars and celebrities, teddy collection on the bed, dressing table with a huge mirror and stacks of makeup, and a stereo sitting atop a wardrobe in another corner.
“They gave us all her stuff back,” Mrs. Gibbs said as she got down on her hands and knees by the bed. She reached underneath and pulled out a box filled with notebooks and folders. “Most of it is in the loft,” she went on, “but I put all her letters and bits and pieces here. Look.”
She pulled out a folder and opened it. The large binder was filled with laminate pages of things. Tickets with a girl’s handwriting on. Things like: First date with Dan, and: Amazing night out with mates in Bath. There were other pieces of memorabilia too. Cinema tickets. The labels from clothes she liked. A telephone number scrawled on a beermat. Things that were meaningless trash to everyone except Gemma. And now, of course, her mother.
Eventually, Mrs. Gibbs turned the pages to what she was after. A napkin that someone had written on. She handed the folder up to Jack and he gazed down at it.
The first time I saw you the whole world went instantly yellow. That’s your color. Yellow. Now whenever I see you, everything changes color. Becomes yellow. A whole world cast in yellow. Cast in you. That’s the power you have over me. Don’t ever stop being you. My yellow.
“Yellow,” Jack muttered to himself as he stared down at it.
“Gemma never mentioned him to either of us,” the mother said. “I only found the napkins when I went through it all later on. I suppose I was looking for something that would tell me if she really had run away.”
But Jack heard nothing of what she said. Instead, he was glaring down at the napkin. It was unmistakable. Not just the mention of yellow but something else that confirmed the writer of this note. It couldn’t be a mistake of the eyes, Jack thought. Had to be him. Because staring back up at the detective from that note was the handwriting of the man sending letters to Kline.
“There’s more,” Mrs. Gibbs said. “Loads. The rest of that folder is full of them. He must’ve had a real crush on her.”
Jack flitted through them.
Why do you let those men talk to you like that? You pretend to laugh, but I see your eyes. You’re so sad. Those men aren’t worthy of you. Of my yellow. Maybe one day they’ll be punished for the way they treat you.
I saw you crying around back today. It tore me apart. I went into my cab and hit my head against the door for five minutes until I passed out. That’s how much it killed me to see you cry. Is it that boyfriend? I’ve seen the way he treats you. Coming into your work to borrow money. He’s no good. Be strong yellow and be happy.
All of them were written on the same napkins. Billy’s Pit Stop.
43
Alice was busy going through the list of possibles. People with a history of violence that included guns or a history of hurting teenagers. It was a tedious exercise that she and three other detectives were busy undertaking, helping to eliminate possibles that the system or the public had thrown up. Over the phones, several people had dropped the name of a certain pub landlord.
The detective walked into a tall-ceilinged east-end pub, a long bar covering the whole of the back wall
. A St. George’s flag was draped behind it and an ill-tempered looking man with tattooed arms stood in front of that. His stern, nettle licking face creaked into a cordial smile when the blonde came strolling in.
“What’ll it be?” he said.
“John Allen?”
“Yeah.” He pierced his eyes at her.
“DI Newman.”
She pulled out her ID and if he hadn’t been standing in his own pub, he’d have spat. His already unfriendly face took on an expression of complete hostility.
“Three years ago,” she began, “you were released from prison, having served twenty for armed robbery. You shot and wounded a post office employee.”
“And I served my time.”
“You’re still under license.”
A middle-aged woman covered in makeup waltzed out from a doorway and stood beside John Allen. Her long, black hair was tied up on top of her head like a towel and her bright pink fingernails stuck out the ends of her hands like claws.
“What’s he done now?” the woman asked as she sidled into him.
“I’m about to find out,” Allen grunted.
“Are you his wife?” Alice asked the woman.
“For my sins.”
“Where was he Saturday evening between seven and ten?”
“Here. He was our quizmaster.”
She smirked at Alice while her husband gave the detective a death stare.
“And you can prove that?”
“Me and the sixty-odd we had in. He were here all day and night. Afterwards, I cleaned up with him and we went up to bed at one. Wanna know what we did then?”
Alice ignored her and turned to John Allen.
“Do you know a man by the name of Tommy Lewis?”
“Never heard of him,” came the curt reply. “Now, is that all?”
“Yeah. Stay out of trouble.”
“I’ll try to be a good boy.”
John Allen was crossed off her list. She wouldn’t bother checking his alibi unless something else came up. The people who phoned in with his name were obviously disgruntled patrons who’d probably been barred recently.
Alice left the pub and got back in her car, heading to the next address. It was situated in a tall block of flats. A man by the name of William Cain lived on the tenth floor. He’d been released from prison only three months ago and it was the first address he’d ever lived in on his own, having lived with his parents prior to his original arrest.
How terribly depressing, Alice commented in her head when she parked outside the gray block of concrete.
William Cain had been fourteen when he took his father’s antique revolver and killed a boy he claimed was bullying him. It had happened twelve years ago. The then teenage William brought the pistol into school and shot the other boy in the playground. The bullet tore through the boy’s liver and he died on the way to hospital from internal bleeding. Since then, William had lived in a youth offenders unit, followed by adult prison at twenty-one, and now, at the age of twenty-six, a relatively independent existence in a concrete cubicle.
“DI Newman,” she said as she held her ID out.
William Cain had the door on the chain and only open a few inches. His frightened eyes peeked out from the dark innards of his flat and his hands stayed firmly on the edge of the door. The two of them stood frozen on the threshold for several seconds, the man spying the identification and appearing to read every word to make sure.
“Can I come in?” Alice felt the need to ask.
He came away from the door, unfastened the bulky chain and opened it. When Alice stepped inside, she immediately smelled smoke. Looking down, she saw a large burn mark in the carpet. Turning, she saw that the door was covered in soot.
“Local kids messing about,” William Cain pointed out.
“They could kill you,” Alice remarked, turning back to him.
“It was nothing. Honest. We were all kids once.”
A nervous look appeared to be permanently resting on his face. It must have been there a long time, Alice thought. All the way through school leading up to the attack. All the way through prison leading up to release. And now all the way up until death.
They walked into a lounge that had nothing in it except a rickety coffee table with a top that sported more scratches than veneer, an old bookcase with football stickers all up its sides and several dogeared soft back books lining its shelves, a stereo with a CD player, and two bean bags.
“I can’t imagine gettin’ a couch up here,” William remarked in a soft voice as they stood on the threshold of the room.
“I’ll take a bean bag,” Alice said and gently lowered herself into one.
William Cain was a skinny man with bug eyes. He still looked like a boy. At twenty-six, the hairs on his chin and on his top lip resembled fluff. His gaunt body easily folded itself into the bean bag.
“Tell me about your parole so far,” Alice asked.
“I just keep myself to myself,” he replied with a shrug. “Don’t bother anyone.”
“What about your family? Do you see them?”
“My mum visits, but my dad won’t. I haven’t spoken to him since the morning I did it.”
“That must be hard.”
“He never liked me anyway.”
Alice didn’t know what to say to this comment.
“What about work?” she asked instead. “You’ve got a job at a supermarket.”
“It’s alright.”
“What about your colleagues?”
“They’re alright.”
“Do they know about your past?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you get on with them?”
“A bit. I don’t really speak to them. People don’t really like me. Even when they don’t know nothing about me. At work, they just avoid me. It’s like I let off some smell they detect. You know, something that makes them hate me. I wash all the time, but it doesn’t work.”
He gazed into the detective’s eyes when he said this.
“You still seeing a counselor?” she asked.
“Yeah. Once a month. I’ve got to for the rest of my life. A lifetime license, they call it.”
“And do you tell him this?”
“It’s a her. And yeah. I do. I tell her that it’s always been like that. Ever since I was born. It’s like people don’t trust me or something. Think I’m bad. I never got on with anyone at school. Even my brothers and sisters don’t like me. I’m a bad soul, you could say.”
Again he looked at her as though imploring her to believe him.
“And you feel depressed?” Alice asked.
“Obviously. That’s why I’m on anti-depressants.”
“They help?”
“They help against the suicidal thoughts. Make it so I can spend eight hours a day stacking tins onto a shelf. They make me not so upset when I come back to my flat and find dog shit poked through the door, or worse, someone’s set fire to it. It gets me through living this life.”
While they sat gazing across the dusty air of the room, something hit the window and Alice turned sharply to see a scattering of something brown all over it. She burst up from the bean bag and fled the flat.
“Don’t bother,” William Cain called after her.
Alice spotted two small boys running down the balcony.
“Fuckin’ pedo!” they called out as they ran along.
The boys ran down two floors and Alice had almost caught them by the time they disappeared through a door. The detective hammered on it. A woman with greasy brown hair flopped down over a greasy face came to the door, holding a small child in the crook of her arm and a long cigarette in her mouth. The detective spied the two boys peeking around a corner at the end of a narrow hallway.
“Are those your sons?”
“Yeah. Who’s askin’?”
“DI Newman,” Alice said as she held out the ID.
“Leroy! Conner!” the woman screeched into the flat.
With lowere
d heads, the boy left the corner and came to their mother at the door.
“What you two done?” she wanted to know.
She threatened both boys with the back of her fat hand and they cowered slightly like bad puppies.
“They threw dog mess at someone’s window,” Alice stated.
“Whose?” she boomed down at the pair.
“Only that man what you said was bad,” one of the boys whined.
The woman looked up sharply at Alice.
“Whose place?”
“A man by the name of William Cain.”
“Then that’s your problem,” the woman snapped. “The council should never have sent a child killer here. Not with all these kids livin’ around.”
“You do know that William Cain was the same age as the boy he killed? Fourteen. A child himself.”
“You seen him? He’s a freak. Shufflin’ about. He gives me the creeps.”
“That’s no reason to hate a person.”
“Then I hate him for killing a kid.”
“Whatever happened to forgiveness, hey?” Alice angrily chided the woman. “What’s the point in rehabilitation, if the rehabilitated are shunned by society? Won’t they merely shun it back in return? Shun it in their own special way.”
Alice gave the woman a solemn look. Tried to impress upon her what she meant. But the woman continued to gaze back with a dumb look on her face.
“I’ll make it easy,” the detective went on. “Both your sons are to go upstairs to Mr. Cain’s flat and clean up the mess they’ve made, or I’ll have someone come back with a search warrant.”
“For what?”
“That sweet, sickly smell coming out of your flat from behind you. I take it you are aware that marijuana is still a controlled substance?”
The mother went red. She turned sharply to the boys and ordered them to do what the nice police lady said. Soon, both of them were wandering up to William Cain’s flat with buckets of hot, soapy water. Alice supervised while they washed the dog mess off. As for William Cain, he wouldn’t come out of his flat and seemed annoyed that the detective had riled his neighbours up.