by Leona Deakin
‘This monster went upstairs to find the children?’ asked Chief Superintendent Barker.
DI Mathers shrugged. ‘That’s what we need to find out.’
Steve unbuttoned his jacket and placed his hands in his pockets. ‘So what are we dealing with here, Bloom? Is this some nutter killing the families of players who fail a game?’
Bloom shook her head. She didn’t know the answer to that. ‘Have the children said anything?’
DI Mathers glanced through the window and shook her head. ‘The Chief Super wanted me to wait for you.’
‘Let’s go then.’ Bloom shook hands with Barker again and followed Mathers into the next-door room.
‘Wow, Fred,’ said DI Mathers. ‘That’s a great tower.’ She sat on the edge of the seat previously occupied by her colleague, who had now left, and turned on the videorecording equipment with a remote control. ‘Are we OK to have a little chat while you two are building?’ Bloom could tell immediately from the warmth of her tone and her friendly expression that Mathers knew what she was doing. ‘This is Dr Bloom.’
‘Hi, Fred. Hi, Julia. I’m Augusta.’ Bloom sat down. The boy had dark hair and a more olive complexion than his fair-haired younger sister. He wore jeans with a red T-shirt that had an aeroplane on the front. Julia wore pink leggings with a purple dress covered in unicorns.
‘Your name is August,’ said Julia with a giggle of delight.
‘That’s right. And yours is like July,’ said Bloom.
The little girl frowned.
‘Augusta is like August. Julia is like July.’
Julia beamed at her. ‘Yes, like July!’
‘Her birthday is in July.’ Fred was looking at Augusta with wide eyes.
‘Maybe that’s why your mummy and daddy picked the name.’
Fred looked at his sister, then back at Bloom. ‘When’s your birthday?’
Bloom smiled. ‘Can you guess?’
‘August,’ both children said together.
DI Mathers winked at Bloom, then began gently probing the children for details. She started with what they’d had for breakfast yesterday morning and who had been there.
‘Weetabix and just Daddy,’ said Fred.
Then she coaxed them towards lunchtime, when their father had been attacked while making cheese sandwiches with slices of apple on the side. Bloom sat listening, watching and hoping they didn’t hit a brick wall of silence anytime soon.
‘Fred, where were you and Julia when your daddy was making lunch?’ asked Mathers.
The young boy paused, holding a yellow rectangular block above his tower. ‘We were helping.’ He put the yellow block in place and pushed it firmly down.
‘You and Julia were in the kitchen?’
The boy nodded. Julia continued to build her own construction in silence.
‘Can you tell me what happened next?’ Mathers leaned forward in her chair, her forehead almost touching the top of Fred’s head.
The boy continued building. ‘Mummy and Daddy had a fight.’
Mathers exchanged a look with Bloom, and then said, ‘Mummy was there?’
Fred nodded.
Bloom sat further forward in her chair. So Faye was alive yesterday, three months after she’d disappeared. That was good news, if not a little unexpected.
‘Was there anyone else there with Mummy and Daddy?’
Fred shook his head and stood up to place two more bricks on his tower. ‘Just me and Julia.’
Bloom’s heart rate quickened. Perhaps it wasn’t good news, after all. She had a bad feeling about this.
Mathers’ voice softened. ‘How do you know they were fighting, Fred?’
The boy crouched beside the toy box, and discarded several bricks before selecting two more to use. Bloom noted that each of the selected bricks was red. Julia continued to build a random structure entirely from orange blocks.
‘Fred. How do you know they were fighting?’ The boy stood looking at his tower. ‘It’s OK, Fred. I know this is hard to talk about. You’re being very brave.’
Fred shook his head quickly.
‘Take your time, sweetheart.’
Fred gave another shake of his head.
Mathers looked at Bloom and her expression said, Take a break?
Bloom was about to nod her agreement when Fred began talking, his words running into and over each other, his babbling hard to follow.
‘I’m not brave. Daddy shouted run. I took Julia. I didn’t know where to go. I ran. I had Julia’s arm. She fell and I dragged her upstairs. I got behind the bed. Put Julia behind me. Then Mummy came.’ He looked at Mathers for the first time. ‘Then Mummy came.’
‘It’s OK, Fred. You’re safe here with us. It’s OK,’ said Mathers.
Fred looked back at his tower.
‘Then Mummy came …?’ repeated Mathers softly.
Fred said nothing for a minute or so, an achingly long silence. ‘I was scared,’ he whispered eventually.
‘Of what, Fred?’
Fred’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Mummy hurt Daddy.’
Oh no. Could murder be the final dare in some sick game? Who would design such a thing? Who would agree to play it? She and Jameson were out of their depth, if so. They investigated crime after it happened. They didn’t stop it in its tracks.
Mathers swallowed and placed a hand on the little boy’s arm. ‘Did you see Mummy hurt your daddy?’
The little boy nodded. ‘I was scared.’
Mathers looked at Bloom but kept her hand on the boy, stroking his arm with her thumb.
‘I cried,’ said Fred.
‘That’s OK. Lots of people cry when they’re scared, honey. You’re being very brave.’
Fred looked at his sister. Julia was still playing with her bricks, seemingly entirely oblivious to the conversation taking place less than a metre away. ‘I’m not brave,’ he said again.
‘You’re very brave for telling me, Fred. Very brave.’
Fred began to cry, choking on his sobs, his eyes fixed on his sister.
‘Can I ask?’ said Bloom to Mathers, before looking at Fred. ‘Fred, why do you think you weren’t brave?’
The boy looked her way.
‘You took your sister and hid her behind you. Is that not brave?’
Fred shook his head.
‘Why not?’
‘Because …’ He looked back at his sister. ‘Because I cried.’ His voice shook and his breath caught in his throat.
‘That’s enough for now,’ said Mathers, her tone clearly intended for Bloom.
Bloom ignored her and watched the boy as he in turn watched his sister. ‘What did Julia do?’
The boy looked at Bloom with wide eyes. ‘She waved Tigger at Mummy,’ he said.
‘Tigger?’
Fred nodded.
Bloom reached for a small soft toy, a tiger with a dress on. ‘Can you show me what Julia did?’
The boy took the tiger and held it out in front of him, facing Bloom. ‘Grrrrrr,’ he said, as he shook the toy from side to side.
‘And you thought this was brave of Julia?’
‘Yes,’ said Fred, looking at his feet. ‘Because … Mummy stopped.’
Bloom felt a tightening in her chest. ‘Mummy stopped doing what, Fred?’
The boy looked up. ‘Chasing us.’
‘You think your mummy was chasing you?’ asked Mathers.
Bloom continued with her line of questioning. ‘And when Julia waved Tigger at your mummy, she stopped chasing you?’
‘Yes.’
Bloom looked at Julia building her orange Lego tower on the edge of the green mat. She was small for six, with an angelic face and honey-coloured pigtails. Bloom couldn’t help but think of elfin Seraphine Walker fighting back against her would-be rapist. She looked at Fred again. ‘What did your mummy do then?’
Fred looked at Julia. ‘She said, “Good luck to ya.”’
DI Mathers frowned at Bloom. But Bloom had a horrible feeling she knew what
Faye had meant. She just needed to check one final thing.
‘Fred?’ She waited for the little boy to look her in the eye. ‘When your mummy said that … was she talking to both of you, or just to Julia?’
‘Just to Julia,’ he said without hesitation.
‘What do you think?’ asked DI Mathers as they stood in the small kitchenette waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘It’s unlikely a child would make up a story that dark, isn’t it? It looks like Faye Graham stabbed her husband in front of her children.’
Bloom filled her cup with hot water.
‘She has to be some kind of crazy. That can’t be a game,’ Mathers continued.
Or she simply didn’t care, thought Bloom, but decided to keep that hypothesis to herself. She wanted to be sure before she said anything. She needed to sound out Jameson first and look at this from all angles, because if she was right, this game was much worse than anything they’d anticipated.
‘The game started with a dare,’ she said. She needed to give Mathers something. ‘The card said Dare to Play, so it may be a sequence of dares, culminating in murder. If the dares increase in severity each time, it’s possible the player could become desensitized to the reality of what they’re doing.’
‘You can’t incite people to murder just by giving them a set of dares. People have more sense than that, surely?’
‘Depends on the person.’
‘So if the likes of Blue Whale attract kids who are already suicidal, this game could attract people who want to kill someone?’ The DI stood straighter as her theory picked up pace. ‘Maybe you don’t have the know-how or the guts to bump off your husband, so you sign up for this game.’
‘There were problems in the Graham marriage, as I’m sure you’ll uncover in your investigation,’ said Bloom.
‘But would you do it in front of your kids?’ Mathers leaned back against the work surface. ‘That’s the bit I don’t get.’
‘If you needed the game to give you the motivation to kill, that would imply you had some reservations, which doesn’t fit with then doing it so brazenly in front of your children.’
‘Exactly. So she must have been crazy or off her face, as I said.’
Bloom took a sip of her hot water. ‘Or she intended to kill the children too.’ She knew this must have occurred to Mathers as well. She was an experienced detective and interviewer and there had been no mistaking Fred’s fear. ‘You’re probably aware of this, but there are five key motives for any crime. Necessity: she had to do it to survive. Need: spoils like money or drugs, perhaps. Habit. Emotion – but I don’t think this was a crime of passion. And personality, which can be anything from insanity to getting a kick out of it.’
‘Is she a crazy nutter?’ finished Mathers. ‘What about drugs, though? What if someone gave her something that caused her to hallucinate?’
‘I’d still expect a trigger motive. Let’s say she did take something. Why go home? She’d been missing for nearly three months.’
DI Mathers nodded.
‘Look. These are all hypotheses. I’d keep looking at it from all angles. All I’m saying is that human beings are motivated animals. We tend to have a reason for our actions, and if you can establish the most likely motivation for Faye Graham there might be a chance we can stop this game in its tracks.’
‘If it is to do with the game.’
‘Indeed,’ said Bloom, while thinking, Oh, this is definitely to do with the game.
19
‘So what’s the deal?’ Jameson was halfway through a ham and cheese baguette and there was a pint of squash on his desk.
‘Any luck with Jane’s father?’ Bloom asked. She’d been poking holes in her theory all the way back to London, but without any luck. Even if she hadn’t voiced it aloud yet, she knew it was true.
‘No. Jane’s not even sure of his surname. It’s a needle-in-haystack thing.’ He didn’t elaborate any further.
Bloom sighed, took off her coat and sat down. Jameson said nothing. He knew how to make her talk.
She took a deep breath. ‘Faye Graham went home to kill her husband and children. I don’t have evidence that she was there for the children too, but I’m confident that was her intention. She stabbed their father, then chased them upstairs with a knife. She only stopped when her daughter waved a tiger at her and growled.’
‘Sure, that sounds likely to stop a psychopath,’ said Jameson.
Bloom said nothing.
Jameson looked at her and his eyes widened. ‘You’re joking. You think Faye is a psychopath?’
‘Four people go missing. They’ve nothing in common, but they seem to be playing the same game. But why? Who would do that? Certainly not a doting fiancé and prospective dad, or the loving mother of two small children. A student might be daft enough, but the others? It would take a special set of circumstances. Or a certain kind of person.’
‘No. Surely not. You’re not suggesting they’re all …’
‘Stuart was the perfect partner. Grayson the successful son. Lana the flawed but courageous single mother. And Faye the talented accountant. But dig a bit deeper and they’re all facades. Stuart was a bully, Grayson a dropout, Lana a liar, and Faye was vile.’
‘And how is that different to the rest of us? You’re a successful psychologist but a social disaster. I’m charming company but a career dropout. People are good and bad. That’s what you’re always saying to me. Faye might well have been out to kill her whole family, and that might mean she’s psychopathic, but that doesn’t mean the rest of them are.’
‘You mean Lana?’
‘Yes. I mean Lana.’
Bloom rested her hands on the desk in front of her, and then spoke softly. ‘From what you know of Lana, would you say she showed a degree of irresponsibility?’
‘You know I would, but—’
‘How about a willingness to live off others? Rely on her daughter to keep house, for example, or on friends to raise her child?’
‘Well OK—’
‘Would you describe her as impulsive or easily bored?’
Jameson frowned. ‘Sometimes. Claire would probably say so.’
‘How about failing to take responsibility for her actions, or lying repeatedly?’
Jameson said nothing.
‘And have you or Claire seen any remorse or guilt from Lana for the way she’s treated Jane?’
‘This is crazy, Augusta. Come on. You’re exaggerating. Surely.’
‘Has Lana Reid ever struck you as having superficial charm, or a higher than average sense of self-worth, or shallow emotions, or—’
‘I know, I know. A lack of empathy. I get it. She hits a lot of the indicators.’
Bloom waited, allowing the idea to ferment in her partner’s mind. Then she said, ‘Happy First Birthday.’
Jameson sat back in his chair.
‘It’s obvious, really,’ she said.
Jameson started to shake his head, then faltered, frowned and met her gaze.
‘There are two phrases commonly found on cards for one-year-olds. Happy First Birthday, and—’
‘You Are One,’ said Jameson.
‘You are one,’ repeated Bloom. ‘You are one what? One of us? One of them? I’m thinking these people have been profiled and selected for something. And with an estimated one per cent of the population possessing psychopathic tendencies, if I’m right, there’ll be more of them playing.’
Jameson walked straight past Russell Square tube station and into the Marquis Cornwallis pub. He needed a drink. Bloom’s hypothesis was unnerving. She wasn’t one for outlandish theories, and she rarely committed herself to an idea unless she’d thought it through. But this felt oddly knee-jerk. Like something he would throw out as a joke. Like something she’d scoff at. A whole bunch of psychopaths playing a game? Together? And for what purpose? To what end? Jameson thought of the terror plots he’d worked on in MI6 and shuddered. Those had been normal people radicalized to do crazy things. What might someone without a
conscience be willing to do?
The Cornwallis was light and airy despite its dark wooden floors, Victorian fireplaces and chunky wooden tables. The window seats were inhabited by large groups of smartly dressed drinkers. Jameson saw Steph at the bar. He raised a hand and waved. Steph worked in the British Medical Association offices around the corner and could often be found here on a week night. She was petite and perky with curly red hair and a dirty laugh. They’d had a few flings – nothing serious, just fun, which had suited him fine. After spending his twenties and early thirties hiding his profession from every woman he dated, he’d become a fan of informal, no-strings relationships. He hoped Steph might take the edge off his day.
‘What’s occurring?’ said Steph in a terrible Welsh accent.
Jameson smiled. He liked that she tried. ‘Fancy a drink?’ he said. ‘I’ve had a shitty day.’
‘Sounds like a blast. Count me in.’ Steph held up two fingers to the barman. ‘Peroni, please.’ She turned to Jameson. ‘Wanna talk about it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Good.’ The beers arrived and they clinked their bottles together. Jameson lifted the bottle to his lips and then paused. A woman was approaching, sidling up behind Steph and placing a hand on her shoulder.
‘I’m heading off now, Steph,’ she said. ‘Thanks for inviting me.’
Jameson wanted to look at the woman, but he didn’t want to be seen to be looking.
Steph swivelled on her bar stool. ‘Are you sure? We’re only just getting started. We were going to grab some food later.’ Steph looked over at Jameson. ‘You up for that, Marcus?’
Before Jameson could respond the woman said, ‘That’s very kind. Maybe next time though.’ He couldn’t stop staring at her blue eyes. The smallest of smiles touched her lips. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said. Four words clearly meant for him.
Jameson watched the blonde woman walk away as Steph began talking about some actor she’d seen on the train.
‘Who was that?’ he said, interrupting Steph’s story.
‘One of the doctors seconded to the BMA. Sarah something. I can’t remember now. She’s nice. A bit boring, but pleasant enough.’
Jameson continued to drink his beer and catch up with Steph, but he no longer hoped for an invite. That sexy smile and the ‘Nice to meet you’ had distracted him. And he thought it might be nice to run into Dr Sarah Something again. Very nice indeed.