The Two

by Will Carver

  She knows I am looking.

  ‘I start to walk, dragging my feet through the thick dust layer, but it makes no noise. I jump up, slamming my feet into the ground as I land, crashing them down mutely. I scream the silent scream of the girl in the black emptiness.’

  I can still feel.

  And this worries me.

  I think about The Smiling Man stuffing my mouth with cigarettes, stretching my lips beyond their elasticity and suffocating me with the nicotine-drenched smoke. The consternation bubbles higher. The Two have changed, I have no protection and now I am walking in this perpetual black box.

  And nobody can wake me up.

  ‘A dot of light appears miles into the distance. No matter which direction I turn, it is still directly in front of me. I feel a compulsion to run. I have my sight. I can see, and the dot has become a blob of light. If I keep going it will become a smudge, before long it will be a beam, then a flood, and a flare.’ I start to sit forwards as I gesticulate; the emotion of the story is clearly heightening Alison’s own excitement. This mysticism turns her on.

  ‘My mind tries to keep up with my feet as I stride out into a sprint, the half circle of blue-white brightness sprouting into a dome. The aroma of apples returns, the fragrant hay of other visits to this realm. My senses are returning. I see the two figures in collusion, their blur swiftly dripping into a sharp focus.’

  ‘What is it?’ She can’t help but join in. Her voice is slightly higher as she speaks the word what. As though on the brink of orgasm.

  ‘The Two are standing together, glowing in a white so white it is blue; they replicate the scene which only I saw in Hyde Park as Talitha Palladino’s body lay charred and disfigured behind me.’

  ‘You never told me about that,’ she drones, dropping back a little in her seat.

  ‘I never told anybody about that,’ I try to reassure her.

  ‘So what happened … at Hyde Park?’

  ‘I’m getting there,’ I lash out. It takes a second to regain my composure. Any molecule of foreplay has dissipated. Alison now rests back in her chair and we resume professionalism.

  ‘My hearing restored, I hear myself panting. Forever is a long way to run. This time I am allowed closer and I slow my body and breathing down so as not to agitate them. It seems that they do not know I am here. That somehow they have a private moment away from my thoughts.’

  That I am intruding on my own consciousness.

  ‘I stop a short distance from where they stand together. I have nothing to hide behind but darker atmosphere. The crossed path beneath them is lit in a similar blue to their auras yet I see a dark spot between their feet. This is where the girl buried her box.’

  Alison’s eyes widen with intrigue at the mention of the crossroads, then augment into fear at the utterance of the buried box.

  She knows.

  ‘The boy moves in close to the girl and whispers something into her ear that makes her drop to her knees in front of him. He looks down at her but I do not see his lips move, yet she nods in agreement. He doesn’t say anything again but she nods with more conviction. He lays his hand on top of her head, looks up to the dark sky above then disappears.’ I notice that Alison is preoccupied. Anxious. She wants me to get to the end of my story.

  ‘The girl begins to cry. But I can hear her now. This is no longer a silent wail. I wait, not wanting to interrupt this time that should clearly be solitary. She cries and cries and cries on her knees. At first it sounds like disappointment or bereavement but it soon transforms into something far more peculiar. Like a weeping laugh. A bawling chortle.

  As though she is happy. And, all of a sudden, she stands and walks off calmly into the distance.’

  ‘And that’s it? You wake up there?’ she chimes in impatiently.

  ‘I remain in my glued position, waiting for her to give me a sign, knowing there is more to the intuition, but she just disappears. Just like the boy.’

  The Two have gone.

  I am left alone with an illuminated crossroads and a black hole.

  ‘With each step I peer around into the blackness, half expecting to see something, half prepared for an attack of some kind. But two steps pass, then five, then ten, and I find myself on the crossroads looking down at the dirt.’

  ‘You see the box,’ she affirms, knowingly.

  I calm myself with a deep breath. I want to give all the information not a partial representation.

  Continuing as though her interjections are inconsequential I tell her that I crouch down next to the spot where a hole has clearly been filled in recently. Not a large hole. Something big enough to bury a tobacco tin. Still, I worry, and judder my hand away from the earth before looking over both shoulders once more.

  But they are gone.

  This is what I am supposed to see.

  It is time. I need to work for the answers.

  Be an investigator.

  I use my right hand to brush away the soft dirt that reveals the top of a metal tin. With the two longest fingers on each hand I create a moat around the tin, gradually getting deeper and deeper until I can create enough leverage to force it from its confines.

  The apple perfume fades and with it the chill returns. The light around begins to diminish, slowly ebbing away until I am in spotlight. I flick the tin lid off and it hits the floor. But there is no sound; my senses are waning once again.

  Inside, I find a small passport photo of the girl; a lock of her hair is tied around it. This is placed on top of a handful of dirt. I move the dirt to the side; underneath is another picture, this time of a baby. I bring the photo closer to my eyes to examine the minute features, trying to work out if it is a younger picture of the girl.

  ‘That’s when I feel a stab of ice. This then turns scorching hot inside me. I can’t taste the blood that forms in my throat but I know that’s what it is. The girl appears in front of me and drops to her knees shaking her head, telling me I have got it all wrong. She leans her face in close to mine and makes a soft “o” with her lips. She lightly blows on my face and my eyes open contentedly, confusingly, back into reality.’

  I push back into my chair to signify that I am finished. The regaling of this conclusion leaves Alison’s face ashen, terrified, and disappointed that she had not picked out the things she was brought in to locate.

  She has been concentrating on the Wiccan element, the things she knows, when, in fact, it was the confusions in faith that she should have gripped hold of.

  I have more information. I need to revisit every crime scene.

  Nothing has changed; it’s been there from the very start.

  V

  I STILL RUN in the morning. So that I have something that is normal, something from the life I am trying so desperately to get back to.

  Before the Lord placed a condition on his help.

  Before he made me do these things.

  I hit the chrome button on my watch to stop the timer. A little sluggish today, slower than usual, but that should be expected. I lift my right arm and sniff under the pit; the scent is a mixture of dampness, citrus and the wine I gorged on yesterday evening. I’m sweating out the alcohol. Perspiring the badness. Evacuating sin.

  Gail steps out onto her doormat, rummages around in her handbag, then locks her door. There doesn’t appear to have been any awkwardness since that night of spontaneous ardour. Our near-rape role-play. I don’t even know if she heard me weeping, if she even noticed. We never talk about it.

  ‘Oh, hey, Sam.’ She smiles at me like a friend, like a neighbour. Not as a lover.

  ‘Morning, Gail,’ I call down the hallway as I release the stretch of my quadricep.

  We start to walk towards each other, the window at the end of the hallway allowing enough light through to create an aura around her; she looks luminous. I become very conscious of my personal odour and ragged presentation in comparison.

  When we meet in the middle she graciously pretends not to have noticed with her initial inhalat
ion.

  ‘Are you around next weekend?’ she asks. No time for small talk; she can’t hold her breath that long. ‘I thought maybe we could have a drink, order some food in, maybe watch a film. If you fancy …’ She trails off, playfully twisting her hair, diverting her eyes away in a sexually coy manner.

  ‘Well …’ I start, my slight pause snapping her back into her professional businesswoman persona, ‘I’d love to.’ She drops her guard slightly. ‘I’m doing a little more redecorating …’

  ‘More?’ she interrupts.

  ‘I just want to go over what I did before. I don’t really like it that much any more. Probably just going to paint it white again.’ I act as matter-of-fact as I possibly can.

  ‘Okaaaaaay,’ she responds, light-heartedly feigning suspicion.

  ‘Shall we do it at yours so we don’t have to inhale the paint fumes?’ My cheeks blush when I realise I have said do it. Luckily my face is flush from a difficult workout this morning, so my childishness goes unnoticed.

  She brings her smile back to the conversation, saying, ‘Let’s say seven thirty on Saturday, shall we?’ Then her mobile phone starts to ring.

  I begin to walk off so as to avoid an instance where we feel we should share an embrace or a moment of affection. ‘Sounds perfect. See you then.’ She just nods at me, fishes the phone from the depths of her bag and starts a new conversation on her way out.

  I pick up the roll of paper from my doormat as I normally do, step inside as I normally do, take off my trainers as I normally do, then unlock the door to my homemade prison cell, walk over to my detainee and slap the newspaper down next to her face aggressively to wake her from her slumber.

  Normally I would go to the fridge, pour myself a drink and stretch against the kitchen counter while reading through the tragic headline prose. ‘Celeste Slays Seventh’.

  But things are not normal now.

  And I don’t need to look at the front page to know what it says.

  My Lord asked me to kill one more time.

  I’ve already killed too many.

  He says we are nearly there.

  That it will all soon be over.

  January

  ALISON TELLS ME that the woman I will come to know as Celeste Varrick is confusing Wiccanism. Demonising it. Fusing it with another belief.

  All I hear her say is that Murphy was on to this from the beginning.

  And I dismissed him.

  ‘I’m as hazy about the ritual as this woman seems to be about Wiccan Sabbats, Jan.’ Our relationship has moved to a point where she can shorten my first name in this way. ‘Now I’m not sure whether you bury a picture of yourself or a loved one, the person you wish to save or see again …’

  ‘So this may be a picture of her father or son or both.’ This time I am the one interrupting the story, trying to add to my profile of this murderer.

  ‘Maybe.’ She brushes off my suggestion and returns to her recollection. ‘The box should also contain hair, earth and, I believe, a piece of silver or something.’

  I lean in towards her, urging her to get to the end.

  ‘You have to bury it on the corner of a crossroads and incant some phrase to summon,’ she pauses, looking for the correct words, ‘not the Devil, but perhaps a minion of some kind. Either way, it is something dark. Something malevolent.’

  This is the breakthrough we need right now.

  We need to dig.

  I thank Alison and send her down the corridor. She does not need to be a part of this next phase. She returns to work and I head back to the office.

  Murphy does not see me approach and I hear him say, ‘He’s fucking losing the plot, Paulson. There will come a time when you have to choose a side. He will drag you down.’ I allow him to finish. Undoubtedly he has been trying to poison Paulson’s mind the entire time I was away.

  I push the door open when there is a clear break between insults.

  ‘Jan, everything all right?’ Paulson asks, bringing his mug of coffee to his lips. Murphy starts, but says nothing.

  ‘We need to start digging.’ I say this out loud more to myself than either of them. They both look at me as if that is an obvious statement, as if I mean it in a metaphorical sense like digging up clues, but that’s not how I mean it at all.

  I want to recreate my vision.

  I want to re-enact The Two at their crossroads.

  I want to find the missing part to Celeste’s dual ritual.

  ‘We need to go back through all of the locations where the victims were found and dig. We need to find the nearest crossroads and excavate every corner.’ Paulson still looks slightly baffled and Murphy had risen from his seat by the time I said the word location and started to walk out the room.

  ‘Oh, now you’ve really lost it,’ he jibes, turning his back on me as he heads for the door.

  I snap.

  As he reaches out his treacherous little mitt for the door-handle, I grip the right shoulder of his jacket and spin him around to face me. Then I take my other hand, clamp it around his neck and thrust him against the wall next to the still-closed door.

  ‘Jan, be careful. What are you doing?’ Paulson whimpers, concerned. I ignore him.

  ‘Listen to me, you fucking weasel.’ I have him pinned tightly; my face is so close to his I can taste his fear. My eyes do not flicker; they penetrate through the stare he is too frightened to divert. ‘You do NOT walk out on me when I am talking. OK?’ I wring his throat a little as I ask the question and he forces a pathetic nod. ‘You do as I say. And right now you are coming with me and Paulson to every site where a person has been killed on this case and you are going to fucking dig. With your hands, if you have to.’ He nods again. ‘Good,’ I say, somehow pushing him further into the wall. ‘If we get there and we don’t find anything, you can go off and report back to whoever is pulling your strings.’

  ‘I don’t know what you—’ he tries.

  ‘Just shut up,’ I jump in, emphasising the second t to highlight my disgust.

  Paulson is behind me flapping, afraid that I’ve gone too far with Murphy. It’s not the first time I’ve attacked him, though, and it probably won’t be the last.

  ‘Come on then, Jan,’ he says from behind me, juddering. ‘Let’s get on to it.’

  I release Murphy from his hold and he straightens his collar and shirt, his face showing enough frustration to suggest that he might strike back.

  But, of course, he doesn’t.

  I push his shoulder around again to swivel him so he is facing the door, the same way I would turn a criminal around to spread his hands on the car and search him.

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ I order. And we tread down the corridor, down the stairs, across the Tarmac and gravel and into my car. None of us speaking.

  And I drive us to Parsons Green where it all began.

  There are leaves on the ground where the grass should be, but it’s the same; this location will still always resonate with me as something sinister and foul.

  We stand in the central spot where the paths bisect to form a crossroads. I shudder as the sensation from blowing out Lily Kane’s candle returns while I view the space at which she was cut down. I allocate a corner to Paulson and another to Murphy. They start to dig at the earth with their hands. I do the same in one of the other corners.

  A few moments later, Paulson calls out. ‘Jan.’

  I turn abruptly to look at him hunched over the hole he has made, his trousers riding lower than anyone would want them to at the back. ‘I don’t know if it’s what you’re looking for, but I’ve got something.’ Murphy drops the handful of earth and makes his way over. I do the same.

  Paulson turns around and polishes away the dirt from the item he has uncovered. A small tobacco tin. He gives it to me to open.

  ‘This is it. This is what we came for,’ I say, holding the treasure in my palm.

  ‘What’s inside?’ Murphy finally pipes up, intrigued, remembering why he wanted to work on my team, forget
ting what just happened at the station. We all forget for a moment.

  I force the lid off with my thumbnail, all the time being careful not to spill its contents. All three heads move together over the open tin as if we see its contents glowing. I sense the disappointment from my partners when they see a small mound of dirt, but that soon changes when I move this to one side and reveal the picture.

  The picture is of a man. It is a colour photograph; he looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He has short dark hair and a goatee beard. This picture is wrapped in a delicate piece of hay or straw that has been tied into a bow at the front. The knot secures a smaller picture behind the one of the man. It is another colour photograph, this time of a baby. The baby is dressed in a white sleep-suit so it is difficult to tell if it is a boy or a girl. It has similar features to the man in the other photo.

  ‘Could be the same guy as a baby,’ Murphy offers. I respond with a short grunt of acknowledgement.

  The only other item is a five-pence piece.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Paulson speaks aloud the thoughts in his head. ‘Surely it should be a picture of Lily Kane.’

  ‘It will make more sense when we have the others,’ I tell them both.

  ‘Others?’ Murphy asks.

  ‘Trafalgar Square, Speaker’s Corner, St George’s Cathedral, Hampstead Heath and Soho Square.’ I answer assuredly. ‘We’d better get a move on.’

  Not all of the boxes are as easy to locate. Trafalgar Square has nothing to dig up, by virtue of the fact that it is mostly stone and concrete. I eventually find it wedged into a crack of stone under a ledge of the north-west fountain. The soil inside is wet and the pictures water-damaged but it is clear that the contents are almost identical.

  At Speaker’s Corner, Paulson again discovers the tin in the earth, clearly having a talent for digging with his hands. It is not at the crossroads where I saw the apparition of The Two on Imbolc, 1 February, but at the site of the speakers where two paths cross one another, only twenty paces from the position where a charred Talitha Palladino was found.