‘You’re right. Once they do it once, they’ll keep doing it.’
‘Agreed!’
‘Help!’
‘It was worse than that in Guildford. Guildford branch. Really it was.’
‘Help!’
Nothing. No response from the four men and two women she was screaming at. She might as well have been in a different dimension.
Julia spotted an e-berry on the table. She picked it up. She dialled a number. No one noticed there was an e-berry floating in mid-air. She marvelled at the dexterity of Gogarty’s enchantment. She dialled 999.
‘Which service do you require, please?’ a voice said.
‘Police. Police! I’ve been attacked. Abducted. Call Dougie Randall. He’s with Number Five Murder Squad. I’m in Bermondsey. Ber. Mond. Sey. In a pub. The King’s Head. You can trace me from this mobile phone. Come, come, now.’
‘I’m sorry, this is the emergency response service, please speak or this will be treated as a prank call. Can I help you?’
‘Help!’
‘Is there anyone there?’
‘Help!’
She got the dial tone.
Julia was enraged; yet also impressed.
Clever. So very clever.
‘I’ll get the drinks in then,’ said the fat guy in a blue suit, getting up.
‘You’re on.’
‘Cheers.’
‘Nice one, Tony.’
‘I’ll have a half this time.’
Julia picked up a pint glass. She smashed it on the table. Shards of glass flew everywhere. No one noticed.
‘You should report him if he does it again,’ said the Asian girl.
‘Well he will,’ said the blonde woman. ‘Do it again I mean.’
‘Well I know he will. His type always do.’
‘I know he will, too, I’m just saying –’
‘You have to report him.’
‘But I can’t, I can’t, I can’t report him. Don’t you -’
Julia picked up the largest shard from the broken pint glass and rolled up her sleeve and carved the name of her killer on her arm. It took a while.
‘If you don’t, you’ll –’
‘I’m not sticking my neck out. I’m not –’
‘You should.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘I’m staying out of this.’
‘Yeah but you’re the line manager, you should –’
‘More than my job’s worth? That’s me. Jobsworth Harry.’
‘Oh Harry, I despair of you.’
‘Besides, he’s not that bad.’
And so on. Julia tuned the jabber out, as she gouged the message with glass upon her own bare flesh.
She took particular care writing the E and the Y. She wondered if anyone would realise quite how brilliant she was being. Then she pulled down her jeans and mutilated her left thigh for a while.
‘It’s emotional blackmail, that’s what it is.’
‘Grow up, you bitch. If you’re being bullied, bully the bastard back,’ Julia snarled. By now the area around the table was awash in her blood. The blonde woman who was talking most had glass fragments in her hair. But still no one was aware of what was happening in their midst.
‘Watch this,’ Julia advised the pimply suited guy. She held out her left hand, and with her other hand, she pulled back two of her fingers until the joints snapped. It really hurt, and left her with a floppy hand. By the time she’d done all that, the fat guy in the blue suit was back from the bar.
‘Here you are, people,’ he said, carrying six glasses on a tray with impressive poise. He put the tray down on the table carefully.
Julia picked up one of the pints the fat bloke had just brought, and drank it down in three big gulps. She spilled beer down her top but that didn’t matter. She belched, but that didn’t matter either.
‘You’re one pint short,’ said the pimply guy.
‘No probs, I’ll go back for it,’ said the fat guy, puzzled.
Julia walked away.
She stumbled outside. Her headache was worse. And she was bleeding from her arm and legs as well as from her head now. She walked away from the pub, smacking herself on the temple from time to time to allow dribbles of blood to fall from her head upon the ground, to assist forensics later.
She walked until she found a small suburban street, then she walked down it, still leaving a bloody trail. At the end of the street, she hung a left on to Jamaica Road, then right up a quiet residential street, Cherry Garden Street, staining it too with her crimson track.
Then she retraced her steps, down the same street, and hung another left on to Jamaica Road again and turned left up a third street. She recognised the area by now; there was a discount booze place nearby, she used to buy stuff for student parties near here with Sarah.
By hitting herself repeatedly she managed to make the trickles of blood almost continuous. Eventually she had traced a ‘W’ in blood upon the pavements. A square looking ‘W’ admittedly, more like a ‘UU’, but it was the best she could do. And now anyone smart enough to follow the trail of her blood could read the letter she had written. Assuming, that is, that Gogarty’s spell would wear off when she died; as she knew she soon would. And the letter she had writ upon the pavements of Bermondsey was: ‘W’.
W for Warlock.
Thus, in the blood of her own dying body, had she daubed the nature of her killer. And on her arm, she had carved his name, and also his address. But she had done so cunningly, with incredible - incredible - guile? Was that the word? So if that bastard - what was his name - if he found her, if he managed to - if he found - then he wouldn’t feel the need to - to do to her what he had done to - done to - ?
Her thoughts were a fog. And she was sleepy and she needed somewhere to hide. She remembered the alley that cut through the banana warehouses and she walked towards it. She was dizzy. She was nauseous. Her head was pounding. She had triple vision, at the very least. Yet she persevered.
Eventually she stopped walking. She was in the hidden alley now, she realised. She had made it, though her mind had blanked out the last thirty minutes of staggering. She knew that she would not be found until she was dead; by which time, she presumed, she would no longer be invisible.
Julia lay herself down to sleep.
She wondered what kind of death would await her. She knew quite a bit about the different sorts. There were more than three hundred thousand kinds of after-life recorded, and only a fifth of them involved actual hellfire.
Julia believed she was too young to die. And she was right about that. But she faced her death fearlessly and well.
Skip forward six hours.
‘See this, guv.’
‘I’m seeing.’
Dougie Randall looked down at Julia’s dead body curled up against the brick wall in the narrow alley. Gina stood beside him, silent, sharing his mood, as he looked down at the victim’s body.
The forensic team had cut part of the blouse off Julia’s corpse, to make it easier to see the scars on her arm. And they’d daubed the blood off too, to make it possible to clearly read the message written in flesh. And this was the first time that Dougie read the words Julia had written on her own skin, for him to read:
Gogartey kild me
Chapter 18
Dougie sat in the canteen for forty minutes, waiting for Gogarty to get bored waiting for him. He drank no tea or coffee or even water. Bladder control was one of his techniques, but there was no point pushing your luck.
Finally, feeling utterly relaxed by now, Dougie strolled back into the main station and joined Gogarty, Gogarty’s brief Sanders, and Gina in the interview room he had recced so thoroughly earlier.
Dougie avoided meeting Gina’s gaze. He couldn’t afford to remember the night before that they’d shared. Kickabout and Duck Duck Goose followed by dinner, and cuddling in bed. Then bacon sarnies when they had the munchies and started giggling like kids in the early hours of the morning. Gina was
similarly poker-faced. They were playing ‘two cops who barely know each other, he’s a stickler but prone to panic, she’s a good looking bird but a total tosser’. It was one of their best routines.
Gina had changed her look totally. Her hair was clipped back and carefully brushed. She was wearing a tight skirt, baring a substantial amount of delectable leg. Her top was white and very tight over her full breasts. She had lipstick and make up on; she’d even squirted herself with perfume, though she hated the stuff. Dougie could smell it now: knock-off Cristal. She was not exactly beautiful, but she was eye-catching, and heart-stoppingly sexy.
Gogarty 432 was fuming by this point at the long delay. His brief was twitching with annoyance. And Gina looked bored and irritable, and insubordinately flashed an angry stare at her guvnor as he entered.
Nice touch, Dougie thought.
Dougie sat down and nodded. Gina clicked the button on the black desk console: the button marked CAMERA - ON. Dougie spoke into the microphone in the console.
‘Interview with Brian Gogarty commences two forty- five pm,’ Dougie said briskly. ‘Officers present are Detective Superintendent Douglas Randall and Detective Inspector Gina, um.’
‘Henderson.’
‘Henderson. Also present is Max Sanders, of the firm of Sanders and – whatever - legal representative for Mr Gogarty. Brian, are we treating you well?’
Dougie paused and waited. Gogarty shrugged. Dougie studied him. He was a short man but broad, muscular and fat in equal measure. And entirely bald, with wrinkles that stretched across his entire skull. Like, or so Dougie mused, preparatory markings for a trepanation.
‘You’re not happy?’ said Dougie anxiously. ‘Bloody hell!’
Gogarty shrugged.
‘What’s the problem? Is it the food? The cell? Has anyone been – has anyone assaulted you? Or intimidated you? Maybe one of our PCs? They’re a rough bunch of bastards.’ Dougie was the very picture of contrition.
Gogarty shrugged.
‘Make a note, Gina,’ said Dougie. ‘The suspect has complained of maltreatment and –’
‘I haven’t complained of – what the fuck,’ said Gogarty impatiently.
‘Sorry, I misunderstood,’ said Dougie, with his trademark look of hopeless incompetence.
‘It’s fine. Food’s fine. No one’s hit me. It’s fine. Now can we get on?’ Gogarty glared. He was clearly not a man who suffered fools gladly.
‘Sure, sure,’ said Dougie, and shuffled his papers. Gina handed him an envelope. He took a photograph out of the envelope and inspected it. It was a mortuary image of a dead woman, naked, stab wounds in her chest and abdomen. One of her hands had been severed. Her expression was eerily empty. Dougie studied it for a long time. Too long a time.
‘This is the wrong case,’ said Dougie eventually, with just a trace of anxiety in his tone.
‘What?’ Gina said.
‘Wrong case.’
There was a deeply awkward pause.
‘Guv?’ protested Gina, as if she could deny an embarrassing moment out of existence.
‘This is not Julia Penhall. Nor is it Sarah Penhall. Nor is it Debra Johnson or Melissa Anderson, who are the only other female victims in our case file. It’s the wrong bloody case!’ snapped Dougie.
Gina looked closer at the photo.
‘That’s Linda –’
‘I know who it is.’
Linda Altringham. Thirty nine years old. Stabbed to death and raped in her own home by a frenzied attacker still at large.
‘That’s not one of the Embalmer killings,’ Gogarty said.
‘I know it’s not one of the Embalmer killings!’ said Dougie. His face was going red by now.
Sanders, the brief, was wearing a look of astonishment mixed with scorn. He wore a charcoal pin-stripe suit, elegant and perfectly fitting, that sneered ‘handmade’ at all who witnessed it. And beneath that a pink striped shirt, Jermyn Street at a guess. Dougie hated pink shirts. The man wore cuff links even. To a police interview! There were clumps of hair coming out of his nose, his hands were like a gorilla’s, but he was an upper middle class boy through and through. Smooth, expensive, top drawer lawyer. Gogarty had money. There was no question about that.
Gogarty himself was clearly furious at this unexpected development.
Which was good news for Dougie. He knew that Gogarty had come in with a clear and unyielding strategy. Stay mute; and stay calm. But first of all, thanks to Dougie’s initial floundering, Gogarty had spoken. And then, after the photograph fiasco, Gogarty had lost his Zen calm. He was now well and truly pissed off, due to the sheer ineptitude of the interview so far.
Thus, all was going according to plan.
‘Can I look at that?’ asked Gogarty.
‘What?’ said Dougie.
‘The picture. Can I see?’ Gogarty repeated.
‘It’s the wrong case,’ Dougie explained, as if to a child.
‘I might have killed her too, you never know,’ said Gogarty, grinning at his own wit.
Sanders winced. Dougie handed the picture over.
And he watched carefully as Gogarty’s eyes scanned the image. The still face, the waxwork pallor of the corpse, the full breasts stained with dried blood, the peek of internal organs revealed by her wound, the beauty of her tragically lifeless corpse.
Gogarty’s eyes probed every last detail of the photograph. And his breaths became louder, and his tongue flicked out and wetted his lips. He was clearly aroused by the image of the murdered woman.
Dougie had known he would be.
Gogarty handed the picture back. ‘Never seen her before,’ he announced.
‘We never said you had,’ Dougie explained. ‘It’s the –’
‘Wrong case. I get that.’ Gogarty was crowing now. ‘Wrong fucking case!’
‘Shit,’ said Dougie, as if struck by a sudden revelation.
And he smacked the button on the desk console that was marked CAMERA - OFF, and glanced furtively at the wall camera that had been filming them.
There followed a long and ghastly silence.
Dougie looked at Gina. Gina looked at Dougie.
Sanders and Gogarty looked at each other, taking in the delicious implications of this absurd faux pas. This entire dialogue had just been recorded on camera! Which meant that under the court’s full disclosure rules, the footage would have to be made available to Gogarty’s defence barristers. Thus, if the judge allowed it, the entire farrago could be screened in court before an impressionable jury. The police investigators would look like imbeciles. This was a major coup for Gogarty and his team.
‘Right, sorry,’ said Dougie, in his most authoritative tone. ‘Bit of a bleeding cock-up there! Gina, sweetheart, would you mind nipping down the corridor and finding the real photos? There are nine different murders we want to discuss, as you know Mr Gogarty.’ Dougie looked at the names on his list. ‘Sorry, ten. Ten murders of which you are accused, though one of them may be technically manslaughter. And one of them - damn, let’s not get into that. Gina, we need those photos –’
Gina stood up, screeching the chair as she did so.
‘So DI Henderson will now, yeah –’
‘Where will they be, guv?’ Gina asked sheepishly.
‘Try the exhibits office.’
‘That’s where I got this lot.’ She showed him the envelope. It was clearly marked B. GOGARTY.
‘They must have got them mixed up. Try downloading and reprinting.’
‘I’ll do that.’
Gina walked out of the room, slowly. Dougie’s eyes followed her, with a lingering gaze.
Gina’s legs were bare up to her thigh; they were muscular, but still gorgeous. And she was using a technique taught to her by a stripper pal, which caused her bottom to move around in a slow circle with every step she took.
Dougie leaned over and peered at the departing backside of Detective Inspector Henderson as it etched circles in air. So did Gogarty.
Then Dougie realised
he was mirroring the other man’s movements and he grinned, ruefully. And Gogarty grinned, too, equally ruefully.
‘Get us some tea too, love!’ Dougie bellowed as Gina opened the door. She turned back, allowing the men in the room to notice the swell of her breasts, and the hint of naked flesh at the neck where her top was unbuttoned. Sanders, apparently shuffling through papers, still managed to clandestinely cop a glance.
For a moment, all three men were bonded by shared lust. Then Gina flashed them a naïve smile. ‘Yeah, sure guv. Tea it is. Look, I’m really –’
‘No need to apologise,’ said Dougie gallantly. He glanced at Gogarty. ‘Tea for you too?’
‘Coffee,’ he said.
Dougie glanced at Sanders.
‘Latte and burn the milk,’ Sanders said. Gina nodded as she memorised the order, then finally departed.
Dougie grinned. ‘She’s quite new,’ he conceded to the other two men.
‘Not your day,’ said Sanders curtly. He took out a silver incense case with his initials and opened it up. He slipped out an i-stick and tapped it on the table, then sucked on it. Dougie caught a whiff of musky aroma.
‘Is that the legal stuff?’ Dougie asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Any chance I could –’
Sanders opened up the case again and handed an incense stick to Dougie. Dougie sucked on it. He hated incense, even the legal variety, but he was now mirroring Sanders too, as the two men sucked on rolled styrax bark infused with cinnamon and white magic. Sanders offered one to Gogarty too, but the bald man shook his head. ‘I never indulge,’ he admitted.
‘Not even candles?’ said Dougie.
‘I hate candles. Sigils. Talismans. All that shit. I’m just an ordinary bloke.’
‘I hate most of that stuff too,’ admitted Dougie. ‘Modern world, I fucking hate it.’
‘It was better, in the old days,’ said Gogarty with a smile.
‘Wasn’t it just!’
‘Before the world went to shit.’
Dougie nodded, approvingly.
‘I remember,’ said Dougie, then stopped. ‘Ah, forget it.’
But Gogarty shot him a questioning look.
‘I remember people smoking fags in public,’ said Dougie. ‘I do. I’m that old!’
Hell on Earth Page 19