by Ryan Casey
Chapter Eighteen
The phone rang a few times that evening, but Brian couldn’t be arsed with it. It’d probably be some do-gooder from work. Somebody trying to interfere or tell him what they thought was good for him, like they always did. He kicked his shoes off and flopped onto his bed. His hair was greasy as a deep fat fryer as he rubbed his fingers through it. He stared at the TV set, moving images flickering across the screen and the slight hum of white noise cutting through the room.
He picked up the phone. He had to ring Vanessa. He just had to talk to her. To see her. Maybe if he could just get it through to her that he was sorry for everything. Sorry for all the bullshit and the outbursts. Sorry for what he’d put them through. Maybe things could be okay.
He dropped the phone back to the floor and squeezed the bridge of his nose. It was no use. She’d just kick off–start going on about Davey and her rights as mother, blah blah, all that bullshit. Brian held the photograph between his fingers. The BetterLives car. There had to be some other link, something he was missing. But even if he found it, Price wouldn’t let him go anywhere near them.
Walters’ face as he left the station, slithering away. That soft handshake. Those shifty eyes.
Brian looked over at the bathroom door. His arm tingled. He needed to do it. He needed a release. He couldn’t think straight if he didn’t.
He walked to the bathroom and sighed at the fresh razor blade sitting beside his toothbrush. He just needed a release. One little release…
He rolled his sleeve up and reached for the razor blade. His arm begged the metal to make contact. Kiss me, razor blade. Free me. Release me.
Somebody banged at the door. At first, Brian thought it was one of the doors farther down the block. He didn’t really get visitors. But then, another three knocks. He held the razor blade in his hand and waited for someone to speak or go away.
“Brian, it’s Cassy.” Brian felt like a kid who was just about to be caught wanking by his parents. Cock in sock. Cock in sock, quickly.
She’d go away soon. She couldn’t see him like this.
“Brian, I know you’re in, and I’m not coming to get on your nerves or anything. But I’ve got your stuff. From work. Price told me he was gonna bin it so I figured I’d bring it ‘round. In case, y’know, he changed his mind. Oh–hi, sorry, no, I’m just…” She calmed her voice down as somebody quizzed her in the hallway. ‘“Just…speaking to an empty door. I–I’ll leave these here.”
Footsteps pattered away down the corridor, then another door shut as he imagined a weird neighbour no doubt heckled Cassy before disappearing into their own little pit of misery and booze.
So Price had ditched his stuff. It was the same as last time. Probably a few more weeks off work to mope around and sulk. Maybe he had gone back to work too soon. He thought he could deal with it. Vanessa said he’d benefit from the focus.
Showed how much she knew him.
Brian grabbed the small bottle of whisky he kept by his toothbrush and took a swig as the television static hummed through the air.
Then he pressed the blade against his arm, and relief poured out of his body and he was free to think again…
Another rattling at the door woke him. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but the whisky had trickled down onto his cream vest, and saliva dribbled down the sides of his unshaven face. Fuck. He really did look like a stereotypical drunk now. He’d make a perfect method actor.
The door rattled again. It seemed to be moving on its hinges. Cassy. Just Cassy, leaving some stuff.
“All right, all right,” Brian called, as he wobbled out of bed and made his way towards the door. “I’m not as pretty a sight as I usually am, so close your–oh, I…”
Danny Stocks stood at the door, rubbing his arms. He wore a dark hoodie underneath his leather jacket. He looked up and down at Brian, the whisky stain catching his eye. “I’m not…interrupting, am I?”
“Danny–Mr. Stocks, I…”
“Look, I know this sounds fucked, but I had to find you, ‘cause I know you wanted to know more from me. And the police. I saw them again, outside my house, and I heard about–”
“Just slow down, kid. Come in.” He ushered Danny through the door, kicking the empty whisky bottle out of the way. He brushed a tiny portion of weed into his drawer. Danny’s gaze attached to it like a tracking beacon.
“Could get you into trouble for that,” Danny said, a half-grin on his face.
Brian flushed. At least he hadn’t noticed the cut on his arm. Nobody noticed the cut. “It’s not mine, it…Anyway, I could get you into trouble for being here. A lot of trouble. Interfering with the case…doesn’t look good for you at all.” He pulled a blue shirt over his shoulders and did it up, speaking with a voice of authority despite only having his pants on.
“I know you’re not on the case anymore.” Danny stared Brian right in the eye. “Which is why I wanted to talk to you. ‘Cause…Look, I know you think I’m just a skunk who smokes and wastes his life. And sure, you probably think I’m a jealous little bastard who shagged someone to get back at his girlfriend. But I know you don’t think I’m a killer.”
Brian slipped some creased trousers on, almost tripping as he dragged them up his chubby legs. “Usually people who don’t have anything to hide wouldn’t come around to an officer’s house to try and convince him otherwise.”
“Right. Which is why I’m here. I remembered something.”
Brian held his hand up. “Wait, you should probably tell this to the police. If it’s official, then you should go to them.” He reached around his messy bed for a pen. “I can give you the number of my partner, and she can–”
“No, I need to tell you, because I think you’re the only one who has any idea of what’s really going on.” He tilted his head towards the picture of Robert Luther, stepping out of the BetterLives car, pinned up to Brian’s wall.
Brian scratched the back of his neck. “Look, mate, I appreciate your concern and all that do-goodery you’re trying, but the BetterLives lead is tired. There’s nothing more to it. We’re going back to the basics. Colleagues. Friends. Lovers.” He emphasised the last word.
Danny smiled. “Right. Which is why I needed to speak to you about what I remembered.”
Brian twitched his eyebrows. This wasn’t right. He could get into trouble for this. Ah, fuck it. “Go on,” he said, collapsing onto the edge of his bed.
Danny took a deep breath and straightened his posture. “Well, in the later days, before we, y’know, grew tired of each other…She seemed weird. Like, at first I thought it was just because she’d been with me for a few months, just general shit like that. But I’m not a paranoid guy. I didn’t think there was another guy involved, not really.”
Brian frowned. “Is there a point to this?”
Danny gulped and squinted. “Well, I never really thought about it before, but just the way she acted and some of the things she said, they came to me. She was obsessed with work. One day, she came in and she just started crying and locked herself in the bathroom. And I just thought–women. Messed up, from Venus, all that. And then I started to suspect there was someone else, and that’s when it all just merged together…”
Brian shook his head. “Kid, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she was falling out of love with you. She found someone else. Maybe that someone else wanted to kill her. They certainly don’t seem too keen on coming forward. But those things, those little signs of deterioration…I’ve seen them. Shit–I’m going through it at the mo. That’s just what happens.”
Danny’s eyes clouded over. “Sorry to hear about that. But there was something else. Something she was becoming obsessed with. I…” He leaned back against Brian’s desk. “I remember one night, we were in the hospital. We were blazing, but she was real high. But her eyes were gone before we’d even smoked, right? And…and I just remember her sitting there and loo
king at me when I asked her if things were all right, and just saying, ‘Dan, they will be soon, but I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen when everyone finds out.’ And alarm bells rang then. I thought she was on about another guy. But I dunno. The more I think about it now, it seemed…different.”
Brian frowned as Danny, choking up, said the words. “And what do you make of it now?”
Danny fidgeted with his collar. “I think she might have known something. Maybe it was to do with work. But I think she might have known something, and she might have been killed for it.” He looked firmly at Brian when he said it.
“But the girl–Nicola. She was strangled and taken to a brothel. It’s a sexually motivated murder. That’s what these people do.”
“Maybe that’s what they want you to believe.”
Brian didn’t register many words after that. He spoke of normal, everyday things with Danny for a few minutes, but it all kind of buzzed by. He couldn’t get that idea out of his head. A cover-up. Something more at play.
Something hidden.
He opened the door for Danny. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” he said. “I hope you get them, whoever did this.”
Brian nodded and waved Danny off.
The little fragments of paper between Nicola Watson’s dead fingernails. Was she hiding something?
He sank back onto his bed and yanked the magazine cutting of Robert Luther, smiling as he stepped out of a BetterLives car, from his wall.
“What are you hiding?”
Chapter Nineteen
Brian took a deep breath as he arrived at the visitation centre, well on time for a change. He hadn’t seen Davey for a while–not properly, anyway. Sure, he’d caught a glimpse of him through a car window or something like that, but it wasn’t really the same as truly seeing somebody. Hearing their voice. Interacting with them. It was weird, how much you could forget about a person when you hadn’t seen them for some time.
He swigged back a final painful mouthful of cold coffee and hopped out of the car into the fresh January air. Even though he’d had his release, his head had been spinning all night.
Danny’s visit. The paper between Nicola’s fingernails. Was she trying to reach for something? Or trying to hold on to something?
He’d spoken to Vanessa and told her he was off the case. That things were back to normal.
“Are you sure you’re in a fit state?” she’d asked. “It’s just…just remember the way you were when you last properly saw your boy. He wants his old dad back to the way he was. Are you sure?”
As much as the images of the case and the victim clawed at his consciousness, he said yes. What normal father wouldn’t?
“I’ll see you at eleven,” she’d said.
“I’ll be there at half ten.”
And now he was walking up to some sort of visitation centre. He’d kicked off a bit when she mentioned that. He’d have just gone round to the house, or spent a little time out and about with Davey on his own. He didn’t want to be one of those dads who spent an hour under surveillance asking about fucking grades and new toys. He wanted to be a dad.
The interior of the place was just as dull and sterile as the outside. Fake pictures of painted animals and smiley faces spread across the walls. That sour, sweaty smell of kids running around for too long was ripe in the air.
He signed himself in at reception, where a woman with big glasses gave him a bit of a snarl as he dropped a pen on the floor. He spotted Davey with Vanessa in the far corner of the main room, past the rest of the families and the wannabe dads waving candy in front of their kids’ faces to try and appeal to them. Brian raised a hand as Vanessa spotted him and whispered into Davey’s ear. Davey scanned the room. His little face lit up when he saw his dad pacing towards him.
“Hello, you!” Brian reached down to hug Davey. His little arms clung around his neck, and Brian remembered what it was like to tuck him into bed. To tell him a bedtime story.
“Are you okay? I was gonna bring you a present, but I got…I had to start the car up, and–”
“It’s okay, isn’t it, Davey?” Vanessa asked, cross-legged and wearing yet another smart blazer. When had she bought all these fucking blazers? Had she always worn them? Or was it part of her new look?
Davey grinned, revealing a missing tooth.
“And what’s that we have missing, eh?” Brian pointed at the gap in Davey’s mouth.
“I lost a tooth! The tooth fairy came and leave me a pound! See, Daddy, it’s here!” He held a grubby pound coin in Brian’s face.
“Well, did she now? You’d better not lose any more teeth too soon, or the tooth fairy might be asking for a loan, eh?” He glanced at Vanessa, who chewed her lip and smirked a little. Davey screwed his eyebrows together.
“Anyway.” Brian patted his hands against his thighs and plonked down on a seat. He pulled himself up to the table. “How’s things? How’s school?”
Vanessa looked at Davey to prompt him to speak. Davey stared at his hands and stood at the edge of the table. “Well, school’s okay,” he said. “I got a gold star ‘cause I worked really, really hard, the teacher said. And Dan got his name on the board, but I didn’t get my name on the board because I worked really well.”
“Ah,” Brian said. “That’s my boy, then! And, erm, I hope you’re looking after your mum?”
Davey smiled. “Mummy’s okay. But Daddy, when will you be home? Because…because Mummy’s bedtime stories are good, but you play better than her, and–and you watch the good telly with the ‘splosions and the big scary things.” He stomped his feet like Godzilla. “But Mummy…Mummy doesn’t.”
A lump formed in his throat. His little boy. Davey didn’t need to go through any more of this crap. He didn’t have to suffer because of his dad’s job. Brian could be there for him. They both could.
“Well, listen.” Brian leaned in towards Davey. “Daddy just needs to spend a bit of time away, but he’ll be back soon.”
“Has Daddy been naughty?” Davey’s brown eyes scanned Brian’s face inquisitively.
Brian laughed and looked down at his shaking legs. At least Davey didn’t seem to remember the day it had happened. “Well, I dunno, son.” He held Davey’s hands. “But I guess you’ll just have to ask your mummy when Daddy can come home, won’t you?” He looked at Vanessa for security.
Vanessa stared into space.
Brian’s pocket buzzed. The instant urge to check engulfed him. His hands flinched, then he patted his legs to conceal his intentions, but he couldn’t cover it up. Since the Nicola Watson case, answering the phone had become an impulse reaction again, like the need to cough when something was stuck in his throat.
“Aren’t you going to check that?” Vanessa looked down at Brian’s trouser pocket.
Brian took a deep breath and smiled at Davey. “It’ll be nothing. I…I’ll just be…” He pulled the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“Brian, you need to get down here now.” It was Cassy. She sounded flustered, nervous excitement in her shaky voice.
Vanessa watched Brian closely, while Davey mumbled something to her, a confused expression on his face. “Now’s not a great time, Cassy. And my time on the case is done.” He felt like he was in an audition room, saying the right things to prove himself to Vanessa and Davey. The Good Father Factor.
“Well, now you’re back on it,” Cassy said. “Brian, we’ve got him.”
Brian’s feigned smile of reassurance turned into a frown. He stood up from the chair and pulled the phone closer to his ear. “What do you mean you’ve got him?”
“The semen samples, man. We found Danny’s there, and maybe that’s normal, but there’s another, too. Just one more. Brian–it’s Luther.”
Brian’s knees were as weak as jelly. The rest of the room’s chattering faded away into the background. “What do you mean, it’s…”
“You were right. About BetterLives. It’s him, Bri
an. Get the hell down here now. He’s in for questioning. The media are going crazy.”
He looked up at the news on the TV screen in the corner. Robert Luther was being escorted through the crowds of media and into the police station. “Watson Murder: Robert Luther Returns for Questioning.”
He slipped the phone back into his pocket. The voices in the room became clear again.
“Brian, is everything all right?” Vanessa had her arm on Davey’s back.
“I…” Brian, still in a trance, eyes glazed, smiled at Davey again. He squeezed his son tightly. “Daddy’s got to go do something very important,” he whispered. He rose to his feet and sprinted towards the doorway.
“Brian, what the hell?” Vanessa shouted as Brian raced out of the visitation centre and towards his car.
Chapter Twenty
The media already swarmed around the entrance to the station. Lights flashed in his face as a group of journalists turned their attention to him, jostling and climbing over each other for a closer view of this crazy show.
“Sir, what can you tell us about Mr. Luther’s arrest? Is he the man?”
Brian kept his head down.
Another journalist, wearing a blue anorak, appeared in front of him. His goatee flicked out at the ends as he waved a microphone in Brian’s face. “Detective Sergeant, is Robert Luther Nicola Watson’s killer? What does this mean for BetterLives? What does this mean for our city?”
Brian shook his head. What did it mean for “our” city? Was that all he was concerned with right now? What mattered was Nicola Watson and finding her killer, not BetterLives. They might have been the city’s “great hope”, but this was real life. And real life was depressing.
Price was waiting by the door of the interview room as Brian walked down the corridor. His arms were folded, and he chewed at his lip, a frown etched into his forehead. “Wondered when you might turn up to gloat,” he said.