The Two

by Will Carver

  And he doesn’t even question it.

  Even though he knows it is wrong and will be detrimental to proceedings.

  That’s Murphy.

  He’s done it again.

  When we find Aldous on the Embankment at Lughnasadh in forty days, I will let him know that the seventh death rests heavily on his shoulders. That he is to blame. That I don’t care what kind of support he has from on high, if someone else dies as a result of his stupidity, his ambition and his relentless mistrust of my methods, it will be on his head.

  Whatever information he withholds, however he and his advocate hamper investigations, they hope that it will all rest on my shoulders. That’s the plan.

  The worst thing about his treachery is that, if he was more dedicated to his profession, if he wasn’t so driven by a desire to progress so quickly through the ranks, if he was one of us, I wouldn’t discount his input so much.

  And then we would have realised that he was onto something from the very beginning.

  Annabel

  I DON’T KNOW Celeste Varrick. I know the man sat four seats away from me in a circle of anonymous, desperate losers, all dealing with alcohol or substance abuse; those who used these as a method for coping with grief. I know the slender, athletic, goateed man who finally spoke his turn, introducing himself simply as V and running through the catalogue of tragedies in his life that brought him to this place: his dead son, his estranged wife. I know the man that said he had found some solace in his faith and that it is guiding him back to happiness.

  I know this man who purged himself of his demons in that protected setting, then drank with me in the afternoon before cutting a slit through my spine and leaving me incapacitated as the flames engulfed me.

  Still, somehow, I got the sense that he didn’t really want to do it. More that he had to do it. He wept. Silently. But he wept. Maybe that is the thing with murderers: they have a compulsion to kill; they feel compelled to act out.

  I’m not an expert.

  This is the first time I’ve died.

  Maybe I made him do it. I told him I was looking for a way out of this desperate, solipsistic existence. I mentioned that I had tried several religions and self-help methods. That I’d even dabbled with a bit of self-harm. I indicated, while taking a giant swig of red wine, that to forget is to heal. To not remember is to not know.

  Now there is nothing.

  No pain or feeling. I’m gone and it truly is the end. I see no light or man with white beard. Thankfully, I see no man with forked tail and horns either. Death is a different emptiness to the one felt in life. It is the essence of complete nothingness. No sound or light. No shadows. No future or present. Only life has history.

  It is the essence of pain relief.

  The quintessential cure.

  So perhaps, if I had anything to feel in this lack of afterlife, I should be thankful.

  V didn’t kill me.

  He saved me.

  Just as Celeste would have.

  Brooke

  WHEN HE RETURNS for the second time, I tell Detective Inspector David that I can’t think of anyone who would want to harm me, that I don’t have enemies. Sure, I have ex-boyfriends and some break-ups were more acrimonious than others, but this was not a man who did this to me. He quizzes me on my family, the people I work with or socialise with. He asks about the people at my gym and local newsagent and doctor’s surgery. He wants to know where I could possibly have seen or been seen by the woman I described to the sketch artist.

  How is my health? Have I been to hospital recently? What about church? Do I attend a church or holy building?

  I want to say that a church is not a building but a gathering of like-minded people. Instead, I answer. Fine. No. No.

  He needs to understand how I know Celeste Varrick.

  I don’t know her.

  And she does not know me.

  She doesn’t need to.

  A doctor enters, stating that I should really get some rest and the detective complies; there is nothing more I can give him.

  ‘Detective,’ I call out to him, my voice hoarse from the smoke. He turns around to face me at the foot of my bed. ‘I never saw her face when she grabbed me, I’ve never seen her before today, but my mind cannot erase her image, it won’t forget. She thought I was dead and she didn’t look as though she cared one bit. She is a monster.’

  I allow my body to go heavy and melt into the pillows propped against my back. When I wake up, a different man is in my room. He tells me his name is Detective Sergeant Murphy. He says he is working on my case. He informs me that the Detective Inspector and the large one who rode in the ambulance with me have been called to another victim, that the woman in the picture has taken another life as a substitute for her failure with me. Detective Sergeant Murphy has been sent to watch over me. To protect me.

  ‘You’ll be safe with me, Ms Derry,’ he smiles confidently.

  Now I am afraid.

  The truth of my situation suddenly hits me.

  Before I have the opportunity to ask him about this victim, his mobile phone rings and he takes the call, walking over to the corner of the room for privacy. I hear him say sir and assume it is work-related.

  DS Murphy mumbles towards the wall for a while; I split my attention between his back and the window of the door that leads outside. Nobody walks past but I am on edge.

  My apparent bodyguard turns around for a moment, looking at me briefly over his shoulder, and I pick up what he is saying. ‘I’m not sure that is the best way to go about things.’ His eyes soften as if notifying me that he won’t be much longer, and he turns back to the corner to complete his murmured discussion.

  ‘He won’t find out about tampering with the evidence but this, this … I’m not so sure.’ He rubs the back of his head with his free hand. ‘Without doubt, he’ll know it was me … And you can protect me?’

  There is a pause and he looks over his shoulder again at me, rolling his eyes as if the person he converses with is merely a time-wasting hindrance.

  ‘So this is definitely the move then? OK. I’m on it.’ He hangs up.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologises, and walks back over to me. ‘Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I croak. ‘Maybe some water.’ I turn my head to the empty jug and glass sat on the bedside unit.

  ‘Not a problem.’

  He picks up the jug in his left hand and heads for the door while simultaneously fishing his phone out again.

  He says Hi.

  He introduces himself as Murph.

  He tells whoever is at the other end that he needs a copy of the artist’s impression faxed back to the hospital immediately.

  Then he leaves me alone for a brief moment scared that Celeste will return to finish her job. But she won’t. They are all making a fuss over me for the moment because they don’t yet realise I am the least important person involved in this case.

  January

  CHIEF ARCHER IS right; I do want to look at this.

  Seeing her contorted body on the floor, charred beyond recognition, I’m taken back months to the vision of Talitha Palladino, the third person in this series of twisted murders. The scene has so many identical aspects to the location I examined after finding Brooke Derry. The candles, the wheel, the hay, the fire. But it’s worse. It worked this time.

  She is dead.

  Completely dead.

  I had hoped that the cycle had been broken, that the hole left in the Wicca calendar by Brooke Derry would somehow flush out the killer, draw her into making a mistake through desperation. I felt like I was starting to get inside the head of this butcher but there was no panic. Clearly. There was always a back-up, and she is lying on the grass in front of me, her skin tight and crisp and roasted.

  Now Brooke doesn’t seem to fit the mould.

  A small top-floor flat.

  A secluded ritual.

  No possibility of a witness.

/>   Alison will tell me that this occasion may have been a solitary ceremony but I start to worry about copycats. That suddenly it has become much easier for a person to murder their partner, utilise some of these ritualistic elements and push blame onto the killer I am pursuing.

  I may need to question Brooke Derry again. I feel like I am getting close to an answer, that I just need to find the right question for her, that the killer is close, that I am nearing a conclusion to this case.

  I’m wrong.

  And yet, the only thing I can be sure of is that another murder will take place on the first of August. It doesn’t require an appearance from The Two to tell me that. It is the next Sabbat. Lughnasadh.

  But I have to concede that I may need their help to stop it. I can predict the next location by combining my vision with the things I have learned from real evidence.

  In the dead woman’s wallet, we find remnants of a receipt from the Curzon Cinema. I send Paulson down there straight away to talk to people. Maybe she is a regular there, perhaps someone knows her. The time stamp has been burned away but it shows she ordered a glass of Prosecco, so you would assume it was late afternoon or after work.

  The post-mortem will reveal high levels of alcohol and other substances in her system.

  A partially melted debit card says iss Annabel Wakeman.

  The scene smells similar to Brooke Derry’s near miss, although not entirely the same. Her body looks remarkably like Talitha Palladino’s corpse at Speaker’s Corner. To my left I see a Catholic church under reconstruction, with scaffolding erected around the front face. Over my right shoulder, another church. The vicinity of these buildings cannot be coincidence.

  Ignoring the recently arrived fire chief, Archer, I think of Lily Kane, I think of Totty Fahey, I think of Graham White.

  I see the sketched face of Celeste Varrick.

  The photographer takes pictures of everything: the body, the ground around her, the statue ahead of us, the damaged building, everything is important. This will be useful.

  To help see the things that we have not seen.

  ‘Two in one day. When are you going to catch this guy?’ Archer teases unpleasantly, his sarcasm laced with venom.

  ‘It’s a woman,’ I say, not looking him in the face. Returning the favour.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The killer is a woman.’ I bend down and pry open Annabel’s pocket with the end of my pen.

  ‘Oh. Well that has to be an even bigger kick in the nuts, then, doesn’t it?’

  ‘A killer is a killer, Chief Archer. Doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman, an adult or a child,’ I reply dismissively.

  I don’t believe I would have been as coherent two or three months ago. I’m hoping that my activity around the body is indication enough that I do not wish to enter into debate.

  He walks off, muttering to himself, ‘Well, maybe you should get a bloody move on, then.’

  There is more than enough evidence here to suggest the same murderer. The most important information now is the time of death. If this took place before the Brooke Derry attempt, then she is clearly trying to ramp up her death quota. If it happened after, then it could be more random. A desperate attempt to compensate for the earlier failure.

  This is right. I can feel it now.

  I’m close.

  Nobody else has to die.

  But the differences between the two victims found today and the ones which have come before start to niggle at me. Perhaps it can be explained away as an act of desperation causing the killer to make mistakes. Maybe Alison was right: The Two are not representative of killer and victim but instead signify two separate killers.

  V

  SHE CANNOT HEAR me behind the closed door. Celeste is caught, she has been detained and restrained. As I sit on my worn sofa, staring at the back wall of the flat changing once again from green to red, I cry.

  Only the Lord witnesses my moments of pleasure.

  And my moments of weakness.

  Initially my tears fall silently through exaltation and relief. I’ve got her. The woman whose face will appear on the front of the newspaper, whose work I have been monitoring for months, waiting for the Lord to allow me to act upon my urge. I have her.

  Gazing at the wall, I become engrossed in the flicking light show. Celeste’s wails are absorbed into the white paint of her cell, only escaping under the door as inaudible murmurs. I drink to her futility. I toast my own patience. I think back to November the first and the line graph on the front page that illustrated the rise in London knife crime. I reminisce over the text explaining Celeste’s first ritual the night before on Parsons Green.

  I afford myself a smile of congratulation through my tears.

  And then I think of the other thing He made me do.

  I think of Annabel and my elation instantly evaporates.

  I breathe in once more, a deep, deliberate breath; one that seems like preparation for something more substantial. It is. I let out a noise like a feral pig that has just been shot through the lungs and is screaming the last air from its body. As though someone is slowly releasing the air from a balloon, my high-pitched lament elongates the words Oh and No into a note that harmonises with the hum of the city and drowns the muffle of the villain tied up in the room my son never got to sleep in.

  Why would you have me do this?

  But who am I to question? He is all-seeing. He is all-knowing. He sees my doubts.

  My guilt is amplified.

  I cannot come back from this. Sammael Abbadon has died too and only V remains.

  V killed Annabel Wakeman to capture Celeste Varrick. This act bears no comparison to the misery caused by Celeste and the five lives she interfered with before today. She is the monster. She acts on impulse. She toys with fate.

  V should not be punished for this.

  V was working on behalf of the Lord; there was a higher purpose. The Lord sees the larger panorama.

  It is not V who wails in self-reproach as the wall flicks from orange to green.

  This is weakness.

  This is the impotence that lost a man his wife and child.

  This is the last part of Sammael.

  I sit back and take another mouthful of alcohol. Whoever I am, I will be rewarded.

  Lughnasadh

  August 2009

  January

  I DON’T KNOW that V has Celeste locked in his makeshift jail cell. I don’t even know who V is or why he feels obligated to act on behalf of the law. What I am aware of is that tomorrow marks the seventh Sabbat of this cycle.

  And I don’t want to get to the eighth.

  The cycle cannot be completed otherwise we may never have another opportunity to locate Celeste. She must not be given the chance to conclude her work.

  Higgs and his team are still running through hours of footage and logs from hospitals and holy buildings within the vicinity of each crime scene.

  Alison is convinced that both rituals performed at Litha involving Brooke and Annabel show an understanding of Wiccan principles. I feel that the signature of the previous murders seems to have been forged. They were similar yet not quite the same to the trained eye.

  I feel so close.

  As I step up the intensity of the investigation, so The Two increase their involvement in proceedings. Last night, as expected, they visited again.

  I’m stuck in traffic on the way to the station. My eyes are bloodshot and yellowing through lack of sleep, stress and booze, and the car hasn’t moved for around eight minutes. I lean across to the glove box, hunting for some painkillers; the throb of my brain seems to be increasing with every passing minute that I am stuck in this jam, forcing my eyebrows lower as I grimace, flattening the lines on my forehead.

  I grip my head, making my hand into a claw. The thumb presses on my right temple, the two long middle fingers on the left. I lower my chin to my chest and squeeze, hoping to massage the discomfort away.

  The vice lifts my head back up and I o
pen my eyes to view the traffic situation again.

  I watch the traffic lights cycle through once without any cars being given the opportunity to move. It reminds me of the boy and his flashing eyes. I am seeing what he sees.

  The light turns red again. We stop. I am suddenly reminded of the boy.

  And I think again of his visit as I slept last night.

  I am in darkness.

  And I smell apples.

  And dust.

  I don’t know whether I am asleep or awake, but directly ahead of me The Two are frozen in tableau. The boy wears a plain white smock; his facial features are obscured in their darkness; occasionally, his eyes flicker their spectral palette. The girl is decorated in simple black, her face bright white, angelic, glowing. As though one is the negative of the other.

  She has her hand around his neck.

  His feet are not touching the floor.

  I wait for something to happen but they appear almost comfortable. He does not struggle; she does not waver. They just look at each other square in the face, not in confrontation, not in abhorrence; it seems more like love. Like they are sharing a moment.

  I notice a thin circle around the boy’s dangling feet.

  Then it erupts into flames as high as the boy’s head, making him disappear into a cylinder of fire. The girl does not let go, she does not break her stare; she seems unaffected by the heat.

  And she turns her pure, clean face gradually towards mine.

  January

  A LOUD HONK snaps me out and I see that the cars in front of me have moved on and I crash back to reality, the light seeping through my windscreen erasing the image of The Two.

  I drive off, but I can’t stop thinking about last night – of course I would smell apples, this is Lughnasadh, the harvest festival. The Two are telling me this will be another fiery death, of that I am sure. It may be that their outfits, the smocks, are leading me towards the hospital. I know this already. Maybe Celeste has access to records, maybe she works for the health service in some capacity.