The Safe Word

by Karen Long

  “They were chosen for me,” he answered simply. “Men of vision offered them up. Lydia…” he smiled, “… recognised her own destiny and arranged for own passing.”

  “But Malcolm Stringer just wanted his boss tormented,” said Eleanor cautiously.

  He shrugged, “Stringer was an idiot. He didn’t recognise the importance of his actions. But not many do.”

  “I do,” she said slowly, unable to suppress a shudder of disgust.

  Hughes reached over and stroked her face with his long, delicate fingers. “Carin was right about you. She said that you would be my greatest work yet. As did your sponsor.”

  Eleanor felt an icy surge through her intestines as she processed this information. “My…my sponsor?”

  “Of course. You were selected by another,”

  “Who?” her voice cracked.

  Hughes smiled indulgently. “He left me a message saying that although he hadn’t known you for very long he was sure that you would appreciate what I could give. He gave me your name and address. You were nominated by one who appreciated your potential,” Suddenly his face hardened and he stood up.

  “Who?” she heard herself scream. “Who called you?”

  Hughes was puzzled. “What does it matter now?”

  “Please tell me,” she lowered her voice but a swathe of rage was giving her the strength that she’d lost hours ago. “Tell me!”

  “A colleague. A friend. I don’t know,” Hughes was tiring of the conversation. He turned to look at his bench running his eye across his tool collection.

  “A colleague?” Her mind was running through the possibilities. Not Timms, certainly not Mo, surely not Whitefoot? Not her partner! But he hadn’t been had he? She’d made every effort to reject him and make sure he knew that he was not her choice. Surely he couldn’t have done this? But she didn’t know anyone else, deliberately having never acquired any friends outside of the department. It didn’t make sense, why would he? A sharp stabbing pain ran through her arm. She swivelled her eyes round to see Hughes holding a huge darning needle. He raised it again and stabbed it into her shoulder, his eyes searching hers for evidence that she was ready to accept her fate. Eleanor had never been so far away from accepting death. A flush of adrenaline sharpened her thinking and dulled the pain, providing her with clarity.

  “They’re going to exhume Carin!” she yelled.

  Hughes stood rock still. “What do you mean?”

  “Homicide is going to dig her up for a second autopsy this afternoon,” she said quickly.

  “Liar!” he screamed pulling back his fist he hammered on her chest. “Fucking liar!”

  “I have proof!” she screamed. “Listen to me now,” but her voice was failing.

  Hughes lunged backwards his fists balled and shaking, eager to carry on the beating. Eleanor sucked in air greedily but a clicking sound now accompanied each breath and she suspected another rib had been broken. She groaned unsure of whether she had the strength to take much more.

  “Tell me what you know, or I’ll end you here and now,” he spat angrily.

  Eleanor began to dry retch her eyes streamed. Frustrated, Hughes leaned forward and undid the buckle that held her head in place. The release of the strap enabled a surge of blood to flood her scalp and face. She had to wait until the pain had subsided before she could speak.

  “They believe you murdered Carin. There was no toxicology screening then so they’re going to autopsy her.”

  “Noooo!” screamed Hughes. He picked up a large knife from the table and held it out to her. Tears streamed down his face. “Tell me now if you’re lying. If you lie to me I will cut your skin off.” With a sudden sweep of the blade he sliced into Eleanor’s thigh. A bloody length of skin peeled back and flapped wetly against her shivering leg. “Do you understand me? I cannot have this happen! Prove to me that they intend to do this and it’s not just your effort to buy more time.”

  Eleanor was slipping into shock. Her leg felt distant, unattached and her head span.

  “Headline…” she couldn’t speak.

  Hughes shook her arm but she was dimly aware of it. She was beginning to lose the will to carry on. She was going to sleep and it would all stop. Her breathing slowed and a stillness descended on her. There was movement around her and a stinging sensation in her arm, suddenly her heart was beating faster. Much faster and the pain returned to her thigh and chest. Hughes voice gained volume and clarity.

  “Not now! You go when this is sorted, when I say so. You’ve had a dose of adrenaline and that means you can hear and respond to me. What headline?”

  “The Toronto Sun… They ran it in today’s Sun.” She held her breath as the blood hammered against her skull.

  Hughes was silent for several moments as he thought matters through. “I’m going to check this out. I don’t know how long I will be gone but you can survive.” He looked over her carefully. “It’s cold in here and that will help you. You want to survive don’t you?”

  She stared at him silently.

  He shrugged. “If you’re dead when I get out I will bury you in the marl pit and there you will forgo immortality. We have to work together do you understand?” He smiled at her warmly. “This is all about you. How special and privileged you are. Be strong!” He bent over and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You are so beautiful.”

  Eleanor wanted to scream her rage and despair but she was silent and let her face fall to a blank. Hughes turned and walked away from her. Soon the only sound was Eleanor’s laboured breathing, interspersed with the squeak of leather as she fought to free herself.

  Hughes was too angry to feel the cold and would have stormed out onto the street with just a t-shirt on but had sufficient composure to recognise that such an action would draw attention to himself; something Carin had frequently warned him about. So he grabbed a coat and walked rapidly in the direction of the local store. He searched through the papers and found a Times. What he read caused him to clutch at his chest. She hadn’t lied; they were intending to dig his sister up and perform some obscene autopsy upon her. He lifted his head up from the paper and saw several people were watching him curiously. Had he said anything out loud or made some sort of exclamation. He threw a dollar fifty onto the counter and left quickly. He had to stop this happening. If Carin was disturbed in any way or exposed to some grotesque indignity then she might leave him forever. The thought was unbearable. He’d lost her once, just as they had found out how much they meant to one another. He could sense her next to him frightened and alone, just like it was in the days before she died.

  Carin had sat at the table listening to the voices; the ones that told her the secrets. He’d tried to hear them too, listening in silence for hours, but he wasn’t as intuitive as her. On the day of her passing she hadn’t wanted to go to school but sat at the table in her nightdress, the white one that made her look so ghostly and beautiful, not hearing him because the voices were too loud and important.

  Lee had known for some considerable time that Marilyn ‘did’ things to Carin. Little things that she didn’t like to share with him but sometimes he heard her talking to the voices about how Marilyn thought she was a demon and needed to be punished. He had argued with Marilyn, begging her to leave them so he could look after Carin but she would never agree with that, so he tried a different strategy. Lee told Marilyn that he had spoken with her voices and they had told him that she was to join them. If she’d just lock the garage door, turn over the engine and go to sleep she would awake to a better world, where only the sweet voices lived. He’d made an elaborate charcoal sketch of the world beyond the garage for Marilyn. In it she lay in the center of the picture surrounded by beautiful spirits each one clad in gossamer robes and reaching out to her with gentle hands; each angel based around the image of his beloved Carin. He’d taped the picture to the fridge, hoping that it would inspire her. For several days the sketch remained exactly where it was untouched and ignored. Then it disappeared. He’d assu
med that Marilyn had bored of the image and destroyed it as was her wont when she became agitated.

  Lee hadn’t really thought about the implications of the sketch until Tracy Earnshaw drew his attention to it in his Art class. He had been letting his pen and mind wander and actually started when Tracy whispered, “Is that supposed to be your sister?” into his ear.

  He had looked at the paper and was surprised to see that he’d drawn Carin as an angel complete with wings and halo. Lying at her feet was the body of Marilyn.

  “What does it mean?” bleated Tracy.

  He recalled shrugging and turning his back to her but something wasn’t right. As soon as class ended for lunch he ran home. Why had he drawn that particular image?

  And then clarity.

  The car had run out of gas and sat almost invisibly in its shroud of poisonous blue smoke. He had opened the door to the kitchen and the back yard and had to wait several minutes before he could comfortably enter the garage without choking. Carin’s eyes were open but dull and flattened and he found it difficult to look into them as he lifted her out and lay her on the concrete floor. He didn’t want her sitting next to Marilyn but the floor was so dirty. Flung into the corner of the garage was a discarded plastic sheet that had been left by the landlord after he’d insulated the loft. Carefully and respectfully he spread the sheet, lay his sister’s body onto it and wrapped it around her. He had initially covered her face but couldn’t bear that thought and tucked it under her chin. What he hadn’t understood was how her lips and cheeks were so pink and healthy looking when her body was lifeless and cold. It must have been a sign that she was in some way a higher force than other mortals as he had always suspected.

  Lee sat quietly and stared at Carin, unsure of what to do next. Perhaps if he sat very still and waited he too would die and then all the misery would vanish. And then she spoke to him. Carin had moved onto a higher plane she had said and from this place she would dedicate herself to his development as an artist. He must not die there or her sacrifice would have been for nothing.

  Everything, she assured him, would become clear in time.

  “Hey buddy you ok?” said a voice next to him.

  Hughes turned quickly to see a small, grey man who looked at him with a false expression of concern. Perhaps he had been shouting and this was drawing attention to himself.

  “Yes,” he managed to spit out and walked quickly back in the direction of his studio. He had to act quickly.

  Laurence wasn’t handling matters particularly diplomatically. Having yelled at Susan Cheung and Manny, even he recognised that it was time for him to leave Timms and Smith to coordinate the exhumation.

  “Sorry… sorry!” he said throwing his arms up in apology.

  “Look, you aint helping anyone bellowing at people who are doing their best. Fuck off back to the squad room and help Wadesky and Mo,” said Timms quietly, holding his elbow firmly.

  “But…” started Laurence.

  “You are surplus here and need to focus on something else. This is covered and the second anything happens you’ll be the first to ride in all guns firing ok?” said Timms.

  Laurence nodded. There were three armed response officers secreted around the cemetery. Two detectives from another precinct were dressed in workman’s uniforms and were ‘fixing’ a broken gate, which lay detached by the entrance. A gardening company run by an ex-cop had delivered a truckload of topsoil during the night and had placed it strategically next to the tarpaulin that had been constructed around the grave. Inside the tarp were Timms and a spotter armed with binoculars and a rifle. Susan and Manny were busying themselves appropriately by moving between the ME’s van and the tent. Both wore bullet-proof vests and were covered by a sniper positioned on the top of the chapel roof. A local funeral home had been paid to wait in the car park.

  Laurence drove slowly towards the exit, scouring the horizon for signs of Hughes. So intent was he on this he nearly managed to run over a woman with a bunch of flowers who was making her way over to a gravestone. Despite the large sunglasses Laurence could clearly make out her swollen and cut lip and as he waved a hand in a gesture of apology he felt a surge of anger at the violence of men.

  It took him almost three quarters of an hour to make his way through the traffic. He’d considered blue lighting but decided that it was as good a time as ever to mull things over. He ran through the evidence they had so far. They knew who the killer was and a rough area where he was active but so far no one had called in to report a sighting of him; well none that had panned out. Detectives were combing the areas but so far there’d been nothing. He felt a wave of despair. How could this have happened? What was he missing? There was something nagging him, a piece of the puzzle that he hadn’t found yet. He parked the car and as he climbed out his phone rang. He snatched it. “Yeah?” he could hear Monster whining in the background.

  “This dog is driving us all bat shit nuts,” said Wadesky peevishly. “How’s it going out there?”

  He felt a wave of disappointment when he realised there was no news. “It’s all under control. Just have to wait and see now.” Laurence walked towards the building. “Isn’t there anything?” he heard his anger rising.

  “Nothing so far. That guy who owns the weird gallery called Mo. Said he remembered what the woman’s name was who brought in the painting.”

  Laurence stepped into the lift. “Go on.”

  “Said her name was Carin,” said Wadesky.

  He froze as the piece of the puzzle slipped into place.

  Laurence flung open the door to the murder room and raced in. “You’re not looking for a man!” he bellowed at Wadesky and Mo, who were working their way through piles of papers. “Hughes is Cindy, Tracy and Carin.” He raced over to the board and yanked off the artist’s impression of Lee. “That’s what was bugging me. I couldn’t see it before because I was expecting Tracy to be who she said she was, a woman. That’s why he had to destroy Tracy’s face.”

  Mo had heaved himself to his feet and was making tamping gestures with his hands. “Steady on we’re not following you.”

  “When I spoke to Tracy at the gym it was Lee Hughes, wearing a wig, false nails and make up.” He started suddenly. “Timms. We have to tell him that Hughes will come to the cemetery dressed as a woman.”

  Mo began to dial.

  Suddenly Laurence froze and then flung his hand into the air. “I’ve seen him! In the cemetery.”

  “What the fuck! You’re absolutely certain about this?” hissed Timms into the cell phone. He was doing his best to keep his voice down but it was cold and frustrating sitting next to a grave waiting for god knows what to happen. “Am I getting this right? We need to watch out for an attractive woman in her early thirties. Why?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Wadesky was deep in a worried phone conversation with Timms when Laurence’s cell rang. He’d been pacing the room nervously while Wadesky established whether the operation was busted or not.

  “Yeah?” Laurence snapped.

  “Oh, hi,” came Andy Bateman’s honeyed tones. “I have a little bit of news for you detective.”

  “Uh huh?” Laurence was distracted and watching Wadesky’s expression which was even more hang dog than it had been fifteen seconds ago.

  “You listening there Detective Whitefoot?”

  “Sorry, yes. Carry on,” said Laurence glumly as he walked over to a spare desk and grabbed a pen.

  “Well after visiting Carin Hughes’ grave site I analysed two samples of an unusual mud that had obviously been dropped from a shoe tread and got some very interesting results…”

  There was a pause, which Laurence picked up on. “Yes?”

  “Mmm, yes sir, very interesting.”

  Laurence had begun to tap the pen restlessly against a jotter, wishing to god Andy would get to the point.

  “Because it matched some of the mud deposited in Mr Chen’s car…”

  Suddenly Laurence was all ears. “Go
on.”

  “Well both samples contained a mixture of clay and carbonate of lime,” Andy was silent, as if this meant something to Laurence.

  “Clay and carbonate of lime. What’s the relevance?”

  “Well in the proportions I’ve found it in, it indicates marl pit to me,” said Andy victoriously.

  “What the fuck’s a marl pit?” snapped Laurence loudly. Suddenly Johnson was interested. He grabbed the map of the region and spread it over the desk next to Laurence.

  “Well…” drawled Andy.

  “Headlines only, we’re on red alert here,” interrupted Laurence.

  “Ok, marl pits were traditionally dug around this area, well the north and west side, to provide fertiliser but nowadays they’re either built on or filled in with building hardcore. This sample indicates that the marl is either still being extracted, which seems implausible, or the pit is unfilled.”

  “So what am I looking for?” said Laurence testily.

  “You’re definitely in the right area of the city and your killer is situated in close proximity to a marl pit, judging by the percentage of minerals in the sample.”

  Johnson was scanning the map and tentatively pencilling in likely spots.

  “Thank you Andy. You are a goddamn star! I owe you one,” Laurence disconnected before Andy could cash in the favour.

  “Shit. If Bateman’s right we’ve narrowed Hughes down to two possible areas each one within the boundary of the targeted area.” Johnson pointed out two substantial undeveloped sites approximately three kilometres from each other. Both sites were surrounded by empty warehouses waiting for refurbishment or levelling and both within spitting distance of Chen’s parking lot.

  “If it was the woman you saw, then she/he left about twenty five minutes ago on foot. Timms is covering the area now but…” Wadesky started but Laurence butted in.

  “We need to get these two areas searched now! I’m going to take this site…” he pointed to the map. “And you get Timms to cover this one, over by the old paper works.” Laurence grabbed one of the maps left in a pile on Wadesky’s desk, a radio and checked that his Glock held a full magazine.