‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Have you been following me?’
Freman shrugged.
‘Well, they both said what they saw was female. I saw a youth, definitely male. I knew he wasn’t ordinary. The sun was behind him, and at first I wondered if I was hallucinating.’
Freman’s sneer deepened. ‘Was he wearing pink tights?’
‘I wouldn’t have used the term fairy. Ghoul, maybe.’ Robin shuddered faintly at the memory. ‘I have vague recollections of jeans and trainers, and couldn’t swear to a hoodie. Mostly it was his face I saw, close up. He was excited, exhilarated, enjoying the death and mayhem. I’m pretty convinced I saw who caused the accident. I’m almost convinced that what I saw wasn’t human, but unless I shunt into the realms of fiction…’ he shook his head. ‘Anyway, it was what he said that I recalled mostly.’
Freman’s scepticism was poisonous. ‘He spoke to you?’
‘He said, What’s it like to die? You know you’re dying, don’t you? He said something along the lines of me not getting out of it alive, but he had to go and experience what was going on… he said, What a rush.’
‘That’s kind of old fashioned, isn’t it? Sure he didn’t say buzz? Was he on drugs?’
Robin said, ‘He was high, Ok, but not out of it, like he was on drugs. But yeah, he said rush. That is more yesterday’s generation than today’s. I didn’t think of that.’
‘So, you think you saw the guy?’
‘I told the cops that. Their artist did a drawing, but I didn’t mention anything about him being different, and I don’t think they believed me, anyway.’
‘So, how does that help me?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me, but it’s the truth. Now it’s your turn.’
Robin wondered whether Freman was going to renege, pinkie promise notwithstanding, but he grimaced, and said, ‘I don’t think it was the serial killer who got Helen. I think it was, kind of like someone tidying a loose end. Told Redwall that. Maybe she was killed because she saw something. The murderer knew about the strangler, so just used that to throw us off the scent.’ Freman took out a packet of cigarettes, stuffed one in his mouth, chewed it around a bit, then put it back in his pocket. ‘So, is this angel thing why you’ve been chatting up that nurse?’
‘Sarah?’ His eyes widened. ‘You have been following me!’
Freman grinned. ‘Jealous. Given the option, I’d give her a poke.’ He must have seen Robin’s face change. ‘Shit, I’m only saying, you know. But here’s the thing. Helen swore it was Sarah who killed her child. She told me the nurse said, It’s all right to die, just before the kid popped her clogs. She said she saw the nurse suck her daughter’s soul out of her.’
Incredulously, Robin said, ‘I would have recalled reading that!’
‘That’s what she said at the time. I didn’t write it, Jesus, I’d be out of a job, but later she denied everything. Said it was exhaustion. I told you the mother was off her trolley. It turned out the kid had massive brain trauma from the accident, had an aneurism, actually, so no one killed her, except the bloke who sprang the stinger. It was better copy to make the nurse the object of a nutter attack, and was probably the truth.’
‘Would that have mattered?’
Freman’s hurt glance was almost convincing. ‘Surprisingly, yes. I’m in the business of exposing stories, not making them up. The mother had indubitably flipped.’
‘I liked her. I felt sorry for her. She was trying to find a reason to live, even though Rachel had died.’
‘Seemed to me she was looking for a reason to die.’
Which was pretty much what Robin had told Redwall, but he said, ‘Have you no humanity, no compassion?’
Freman shoved his chair back, and pulled the dented fag out of his pocket. ‘So, my very self-righteous Robin Vanger. And what, exactly, do you do for humanity that gives you the right to judge me? You worked for a bank, didn’t you? Banks shift more dirt than newspapers, it’s just better glossed. We’re done here, I think?’
Leaving his barely-touched pint on the table, Freman left, lighting up even as he was kicking the door open. Robin realised he’d irritated the only person he’d told about the youth at the pileup. He wondered whether Freman believed it, or even cared, now.
Chapter 25
Redwall looked at the spec Jim thrust under his nose. ‘Hit and run? Haven’t we got enough on our plate?’
‘It’s not what, it’s who.’
‘James Lamerville? Strange name. It does ring a bell.’
‘He was in the pileup,’ Jim reminded him. ‘His car flipped a few times and landed upright on top of another car. Airbag and seat belts did their job. He didn’t get a broken bone, scratch or even mild concussion. He called it in, squeezed himself out of the car window, and helped the rescue services for the next eight hours. He was a welder.’
‘So, he survived the pileup, then got himself squashed under a van? I told Vanger I didn’t believe in Karma, but Jesus,’ he shook his head. ‘Some people just defy the odds, don’t they? Shame he didn’t put odds on a horse. Any trace on the vehicle?’
‘We found the van. The driver had been getting petrol, and left the keys in the ignition. When he came back the van was gone.’
Redwall’s tone was scathing. ‘Handy.’
‘It was reported missing two days before the hit and run, and the driver was using a different vehicle when that happened.’
‘Oh. Well, anyway, someone else can grab this one.’
‘Well, in the light of Helen’s murder, I did wonder.’
Redwall stilled. ‘Wonder what?’
Jim shrugged. ‘A connection? This guy might just have been one unlucky sonofabitch. But what if the guy who caused the accidents is chasing the ones who got away.’
Redwall’s chair, which had been balanced on two legs, crashed to the floor. ‘Hell. The press will make the connection between him and the pileup, soon enough. Let’s hope no one else comes up with that theory.’ He shook his head. ‘We’d better let the Super know, but it’s a flight of fancy.’
‘Unless we get another one.’
Redwall pressed his fingers against his nose. That migraine was coming back big time. He pushed the file back across the desk. ‘OK. Work it a bit. I’m not convinced, but it’s enough to worry me. Oh, and check where Vanger was on those days.’
Jim raised his brows.
‘I don’t know,’ Redwall said, morosely. It’s probably nothing but a glitch of reasoning. But we’d look pretty stupid if we didn’t check, and it turned out that Mr bloody Vanger was laughing up his sleeve at us.’
‘I still don’t buy it. If he’d caused the pileup, he wouldn’t have driven into it, and there was that youth seen planting the stinger.’
‘Yeah, I know, nothing makes sense. But what if the guy was nothing to do with it? Just picking up his dog’s poo or something.’
‘At the side of a Motorway?’
‘I’ve seen people do worse stunts than that. What if the remote went off by accident as Vanger was driving towards the bridge rather than past it? The remote had to be within, what was it, 1500 metres of the trigger device. That could fit.’
Jim gave a faint smile. ‘If he did, I bet he was cursing every which way to hell.’
‘Poetic justice, eh?’ But there was something about Vanger that made Redwall uneasy, and he couldn’t put a finger on it. If he was the strangler, why would he be causing accidents, too? Just because he could didn’t mean he did.
‘He was out of action when the serial killer had a holiday,’ Jim reminded him. ‘And Helen didn’t get topped until he was back on his feet.’
‘That’s circumstantial in the extreme, Goddammit, Jim. I’m not saying we shouldn’t follow it through, I’m only saying I’ve got nothing except a bloody ulcer, and that won’t stand up and talk in Court. If we hassle Vanger, and he turns out to be totally innocent, we’re going to have a lot of explaining to do. Maybe you should back off, and just do so
me legwork on the computer. Did you do a background check on Sarah?’
‘You think I should?’
‘Probably a waste of time, the girl’s just a nurse, caught up in things she doesn’t even know about. But a bit of background can’t hurt. We need to know what we’re dealing with.’
Chapter 26
When Robin stepped out of his house and took a deep breath the next morning, everything smelled more vibrant, than it had before. ‘Jaws!’ he yelled, and bashed the spoon against the can. The cat slouched out of the bushes, fatter than ever. She wound around Robin’s ankles, biting playfully. ‘Bitch,’ he muttered, and bent to pet her.
But he’d had a disturbed night.
Had Sarah been truly trying to turn him away? If so, why?
And Freman’s words had stung, even though Freman was a sleazeball. Previous to the accident, what had Robin done for anyone other than himself? He hadn’t been a bad person, sure. He hadn’t gone out of his way to hurt anyone, but neither had he done anything remotely philanthropic.
The accident had shunted him into a different space and time, with a different take on life. Where would he have ended up if he hadn’t had the accident? A ticked-off life-list – wife, kids, a house in a more upmarket estate, which he could pretend was his own while he kept paying the bank – followed by a bucket-list that would probably never materialise, and possibly an early heart attack as younger guys shunted him out of the business.
He was a changed man, and had been handed a new chance. The concept was liberating. He was privileged, too, what with the insurance pay-out; but as Sarah had asked, what was he going to do with that life, that freedom?
To hell with the pileup. Dredging through a backlog of data was self-flagellation. The police would either get the guy, or they wouldn’t. And nothing would change what had happened. He went in to the house and stacked all the pile-up statements, ready to return them to Redwall. No one else had mentioned a youth who glowed. Of course they hadn’t. The large detective must have a sense of humour, even though it wasn’t obvious. Robin had asked for information, and it had been provided – by the dustbin load – maybe just to point out, in the nicest possible way, the most frustrating element of police work. What it had done, unexpectedly, was bring the accident home to him in a way he had not expected, through the eyes of others. As he’d read, he’d relived the accident over and over, and cared, for the first time, about the hundreds of other individuals whose lives had been affected by that single event, and realised that when people said he’d been lucky, he truly had been.
Putting the anger behind him was liberating. He recalled Derek’s steps of grief. But he was no longer grieving for a lost life. Somehow, he’d slid through it and out the other side, shifting even past acceptance into something nearer gratefulness. Perhaps this was another one of those times his analytical brain had just computed the outcomes, and decided that this was the logical response to a situation that couldn’t be reversed.
He went down to the gym for the first time since the accident, and began to work his unaccustomed muscles on the horizontal leg press. He was quite happily shunting in slow, easy movements, taking the required rest seconds between, when Bob, his training supervisor came over.
‘Robin!’ he said, giving him a squeeze on the shoulder. ‘Nice to see you back. I can’t tell you how shocked I was to hear you were in that Stinger pile-up. Stuff like that always happens to the decent guys. I thought we’d never see you again.’
‘There was a time I thought so, too,’ Robin joked.
He was wearing joggers to hide the extent of the damage, but he guessed his wasted muscle would be visible to Bob’s experienced eye. They passed the time of day briefly. Nothing here had changed, the business was doing OK, times were good in the fitness arena.
Then Bob glanced at the weights he was working, and protested, ‘Damn, Robin, I know you want to get your shape back, but you never pushed that kind of weight before the accident. You’re going to do yourself serious damage. Here, let me.’ He shifted the weights. ‘You know the drill, and it’s even more important now. Start slow and easy, and build up gradually.’
Bob knew his stuff, but now it seemed as if there was no weight at all behind the press, so he sneaked it back on when Bob wasn’t looking. Finally, he took a shower and drove home in high spirits, lifted by the adrenaline buzz.
The cleaning that began with the living room gravitated to the rest of the house, and as he was cleaning, Robin wondered if his previous impression of a home filled with Sarah’s perceived bohemian influence, was something lurking at the back of his own mind. He needed colour. It was time he redecorated, flushed his mother’s greyness from the place. That would use up some time while he pondered over what to do with the rest of his life. Maybe he should even sell the house, move on, even go abroad.
He turned the radio on to the classical music channel he used to enjoy. There, fate conspired, once again, to rob him of his equilibrium. The haunting, harmonic strains of the Brahms Requiem filtered through his consciousness to the layers below. At the moment of recognition, his heartbeat increased, his breath shortened, and his sight moved inward as the music triggered a switch in his mind. Once again, he lay there, trapped in the crumpled wreckage of his car, staring out at the glorious heat of the day, thinking that this was the end, that here and now was where he died, flicked out of existence like a light-bulb. This was the point at which the vessel which was Robin Vanger would be drained of life, cease to move and function. The point at which he would die.
Shocked, he slammed the radio into silence. That music held his memories forever interwoven within its folds. He never wanted to hear it again. But the images it had triggered weren’t erased so easily. Strangely, it had been the youth’s callous words that had saved him in the end. Being told he wasn’t dying quickly enough had given him the strength to keep struggling, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, don’t give in…
A chill walked up his spine.
Maybe Freman didn’t believe him. Who would? That the carnage had been caused deliberately wasn’t in doubt, but the reason for it remained a gaping hole. What had been the point? To enjoy the death of others? To somehow get high on it, like a sadist with his victim?
Then, Sarah called, breaking him from his reverie. ‘Robin, I’ve got two tickets for the opera. My way of apologising.’
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘I wanted to.’
Robin had tried to convince himself he was over her, but he wasn’t. He liked that her hesitation held more hope than expectation, but it took no more than the sound of her voice to give it another chance. ‘Which one?’
‘Die Fledermaus.’
Fairly light stuff, but it was melodic and humorous. ‘I’d love to. Shall I pick you up?’
‘That would be great.’
At last, he felt as though normality was seeping back into his life.
Chapter 27
Sarah was dressed in a tight sheath of shimmering dark red cloth that hid everything and nothing. Sexy didn’t quite describe it.
‘You look absolutely stunning,’ he said, swallowing hard. Had she done it on purpose, to prove a point?
‘Come in. I’m not quite ready. This is kind of an apology, which you probably guessed.’
‘So, you were trying to put me off, before? I thought so, but I wasn’t sure why. Are you going to do it again? Hot one moment, cold the next?’
She slipped on a pair of drop earrings, sprayed on a little scent, and gathered up a small evening purse, saying, finally, with a degree of reluctance that sounded genuine, ‘I find relationships difficult. It seemed easier to nip it in the bud. I was being a coward.’
‘And now?’
‘I want to explain. I’m tired of being alone. I have needs, and I’m tired of trying to hide what I am.’
He took a deep breath. ‘So, you are…different.’
‘You knew that.’
‘I thought I was being daft.’
‘How different?’ he asked, lightheaded with the knowledge that he was delving into the realms of don’t want to know… She was beautiful, moving with an inherent grace, but at the same time, there was something vulnerable, moving, about her hesitancy.
‘Can’t you just believe that I’m a woman? I have a woman’s needs. I want to be loved and cared for. I want a normal relationship.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘I’m not a monster. I am human. I didn’t even know I was anything other, until I moved into the city, and found everyone seemed to be cut off from some… senses that I took for granted.’
‘And Joel too?’ She grimaced assent. ‘And now, maybe me?’
‘Maybe. I was waiting to be sure.’
‘So, you did infect me –’
Her eyes flashed fury. ‘Infect? Would you rather I’d let you die? Because that’s what would have happened. When I gave you my blood, I saved your life. I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t even know if you would live. And if your life now turns out to be a little different, isn’t that better than being dead?’
‘I don’t know, and that’s the truth.’
Sarah’s anger dissipated on a sigh. ‘OK. I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t a lot. But maybe we could enjoy this evening first?’
In case, after the conversation, he was repulsed by what she might tell him? But whatever it was, she had confirmed that he was changing in some way – maybe for the better, if his ability to heal was part of it. And there was no point in trying to run from something that had already happened. Was that worse than what had already happened to him? He doubted it. He held his arm crooked, for her hand. ‘OK. Shall we go?’
Outside, a faint drizzle closed the world out, melting the streetlights into fuzzy haloes. He turned on the windscreen wipers, and peered through a gloom sparkling with oncoming lights.
‘You know we’re being followed, don’t you,’ she said, as if it were an everyday occurrence.
Stations of the Soul Page 14