The Lady in the Street

by Emmy Ellis

  “He has his tea here once a month, and that’s enough. We’re not doing any more. He’s a baddun, you mark my words.”

  He’d hated Den in that moment.

  Now he was an adult, he could understand what had happened to Mum. Dad had gone, and she’d had a few drinks to drown her sorrows, to get over the heartbreak, then the reliance on booze had taken hold, a toddy before bed turning to a small bottle. And one night, while off her tits in this very pub, Eddie had got his claws into her. Maybe she’d thought she wasn’t worthy of anyone else, anyone better. Other men probably saw her for the lush she was and avoided her. Maybe she’d thought she might as well shack up with a deadbeat because all blokes would leave her in the end, so what did it matter who it was?

  That was a laugh. Eddie had stuck around. And her? Well, she was dead now. She was where she belonged.

  He jolted out of the far past and took his mind back to last night again. After killing Den, he’d walked around the flat, touching all the furniture, sad he couldn’t feel it properly with his gloves on. Still, it reminded him of his childhood when he’d done the same thing, gliding his fingertips over a sideboard or bedside cabinet while waiting for Mark to come and find him. In later years, when hide and seek wasn’t something they’d played, he’d made out he needed to visit the loo a lot, but in reality, he’d gone into other rooms instead, just so he could touch what real life was, what a proper home was.

  At Den’s for the last time, he’d had to caress every bit of furniture, right down to the cuckoo clock on the wall, and he’d opened the little doors and stroked the wooden bird inside. He hated that bird. When it had flung itself out at eight o’clock in his former years, it had signalled his return to his shitty world with his shitty mother and even shittier stand-in father.

  Anger burned through him now, and he clutched his empty pint glass tighter. He’d only had the one, and he’d sipped it all night so far. He needed to be sharp, but if he didn’t have his usual lager, someone was bound to notice.

  He got up and made a point of nodding to the regulars as he left, yawning as though he was super tired and ready for his bed. People would remember that, he hoped, if they were questioned about the evening once the hen woman was found dead.

  At the door, he glanced at the clock—ten-thirty. Soon chucking out time. The hens had loudly complained they all had work tomorrow, and wasn’t that silly of them to have met up on a week night? Yeah, fucking stupid. They’d be leaving at eleven, so they’d said, and as far as the customers were concerned, he’d be well in his bed by then.

  He walked off in the direction of home, wishing that wind would bugger off. It was nippy as anything and stung his cheeks it was that cold. Then he slipped down an alley that took him to the cliff top at the rear of her house. He’d sit in her back garden until about midnight, on the green-painted cast-iron bench she had out there. He’d already left his roll of plastic and backpack beside it.

  Now all he had to do was wait.

  * * * *

  Katy staggered out of The Villager’s Inn, her legs wobbly and her mind fuzzy. Bloody hell, she’d sunk more than a few Bacardi and Cokes and would regret it in the morning. Still, it wasn’t every day your best mate got married, was it, and it was a couple of weeks until the wedding, so she could stay sober until then, giving her poor liver a break.

  The rest of the girls lived in the other direction, and Cassie offered to walk with her and stay the night at hers, but Katy wasn’t in the mood for guests. Anyway, Cassie snored, and Katy would hear it through the wall.

  It was only a short way to her house, and she’d done it plenty of times before on her own. Cassie had whispered in her ear about the news, someone or other killing a woman called Felicity and two men, but it wasn’t like they’d be out and about now, waiting for her. Christ, that was just stupid thinking.

  She tottered off up the road, smiling at the sound of her friends’ laughter fading the farther away she walked from them. Her high heels rubbed at the back.

  Bet I’ve got a blister.

  The stupid things were half a size too small, but she’d loved them so much and had bought them anyway. They pinched her toes, too, and the pain was getting a bit much. It was no good, she’d have to take them off. Bending, she removed one then the other, the relief instant. She carried them all the way to her house, her feet even sorer by the time she arrived, grit and dirt digging into her soles and scraping between her swollen toes. The wind had helped her along, pushing her from behind, and she shivered at the coldness of it and how it crept inside her coat to smother her skin with its icy fingers.

  Katy let herself in and dropped her shoes on the floor, the clatter loud, and tossed her coat over the newel post. It slid to one side, looking drunker than her.

  “Must put the chain across,” she slurred, finding it a difficult task, seeing as there seemed to be two of them.

  She weaved into the kitchen, slapping at the light switch, her reflection in the window giving her a bit of a fright until she realised it was herself.

  “It’s not a bloody killer out there, you silly cow,” she said, turning on the tap to drink a glass of water, which was supposed to stop hangovers or something like that. The internet was full of useful snippets.

  Finished drinking, she flicked off the light and dragged her arse to bed, flopping down in her clothes. She was too piddled to get under the covers, but she’d forgotten to turn the heating off, so it was warm enough. With the world spinning, she closed her eyes and battled the urge to be sick.

  She had a dream where she was tied to the bedposts, her body a star shape. She tugged at the bonds, and they grated on her skin. Rope? While she wasn’t scared, she’d let the dream play out, but if it got weird, she’d force herself awake, something she’d done many a time. Looking about, she blinked at the sight of opaque plastic hanging from the ceiling, creating a tent around her bed. Her furniture beyond presented as murky shapes, but she easily made out the wardrobe, the chest of drawers, and…

  Someone was standing in the bedroom doorway, the light from the landing shining behind them.

  Katy waited to see whether it was her dream lover coming to do all sorts of sexy things to her, and if he wasn’t her cup of tea, she’d just make things go in another direction. The person came closer and stood at the bottom of the bed, then parted two lengths of the plastic and stared inside through the gap.

  It was a woman, blonde, with a hoodie and black jeans on. She held a knife, pointing it towards Katy, whose heart picked up speed, and she wondered whether she ought to cut the dream short now before it got nasty and frightened her. Her brain was still foggy, though, from all that alcohol, and when the woman climbed on the bed and straddled her, she wasn’t sure what to think.

  “What do you want?” she said, doing what she always did in these sorts of dreams where she was aware it wasn’t real and could engage with the characters.

  “I don’t want anything except you dead,” the woman said in a man’s voice.

  Weird AF.

  Katy thought about giggling, but the woman’s face was so fixed, so expressionless, it put the shits up her and scared the laughter away. The eyes didn’t sit in the sockets right either, recessed and beady. The mouth had a slit between the lips, and the tip of a tongue pressed through it.

  It was time to wake up now.

  She pushed herself into consciousness, but nothing changed. Was this actually happening? Katy’s stomach churned, and again she willed herself to wake but with the same result. She was still drunk, that was it, and on top of that, hallucinating.

  The woman was heavy on her, and she leant over so her nose rested on Katy’s. The scent of rubber and shampoo wafted, and she stared into the woman’s eyes, trying to read any form of emotion.

  They were as blank as her face.

  “Get off me,” Katy said, bucking and tugging at the bonds.

  The woman gripped the knife in both hands and aimed it downwards. It seemed to move in slow motion, sout
h towards her belly, then the blade disappeared inside it, and Katy stared, fascinated that it didn’t hurt. Not until it was pulled out then pushed in again. She wet herself, the hot liquid coating her inner thighs, then going cold as it sank into the quilt. The woman raised the knife again, high, and brought it down.

  “Three,” she said, the word a rasp.

  And she kept on counting, kept stabbing, and Katy felt more than drunk now. She floated on an ocean of pain, telling herself to pull out of the nightmare, and when that didn’t happen, she whispered, “See it through. It’ll be over soon, and I’ll wake up.”

  “It will be over soon,” the woman said. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d said yes.” A pause. A stab. “Ten…”

  “What?” She was fading, bobbing in that void between life and death. Was this what it felt like to die?

  “At Vicky’s Café, I offered to buy you a coffee, and you said no.”

  Katy would have frowned if her forehead listened to her, but it ignored her. “I don’t… I don’t understand…” No woman had asked to get her a drink.

  “You should have just let me buy it. Just let me be your friend. That’s all I wanted, a friend.” She hissed. “Eleven.”

  Then came punches, each one bringing on an agony Katy had never experienced before. It wrung out her stomach in wickedly spiteful hands, and she groaned.

  “That hurt, does it?” the woman asked.

  Katy had no breath left in her to answer.

  The rest of the stabs came quickly then, the attacker whispering the numbers until she reached twenty-three. Katy’s stomach was so hot, with the pain of the slices and the heat of blood that seeped and pumped and oozed and spurted. It dripped down her sides onto the bedding, and she stupidly wondered how she’d get the stain out. Then her mind faded, her thoughts disappearing, leaving her head a blank space, full of blackness and a strange buzzing noise. Was that her life fizzing out? Her mind shorting?

  She stared at the woman, who had an electric toothbrush in her hand instead of the knife, and she dipped it into Katy’s belly then brought it to her mouth and brushed her teeth. Now Katy knew this wasn’t real, that it was a nightmare, and if she just watched it play out, she’d jolt upright in bed, and none of the blood would be there, none of the stab wounds, the pain, and no weird woman.

  She closed her eyes and waited for that moment to come.

  * * * *

  He folded the plastic into squares this time so none of the blood could escape. He’d brought a black bag up with him earlier and set about putting all the messy shields into it. Some of the ceiling paint had come off when he’d torn at the duct tape holding the tent in place, but that was neither here nor there.

  With the refuse bag out in the garden beside his plastic roll and backpack, he walked around her house and, with fresh gloves on, touched and caressed her belongings, imagining what it was like to live there. It wasn’t really a place he’d think of as home, too sterile and modern, nothing like the comfort of Den’s. Agitated that he couldn’t get the same sense of contentment, he left the house and collected his things, then walked away, down the alley and onto the cliff top. He had one more person on his list, and getting rid of him was a burning urge inside him. The wanker didn’t live full time in Smaltern and wasn’t due back from his fancy job abroad until the day after tomorrow.

  That was okay. He needed a break. All this activity had wrung him out, and he could do with a bit of time to process what he’d do once he’d killed them all. He’d move away, from the memories, the pain, go somewhere he could start again, where no one looked at him funny and thought he was weird.

  Somewhere he could be loved.

  Somewhere he was important.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The residue of her nightmare had lingered all through her dinner with Zach last night. She’d ended up explaining that she suffered with bad dreams, usually about Uthway and what he’d done to her. Zach had been kind and supportive, as she’d known he would be, and as she pounded her feet on the treadmill, Andy huffing and puffing on another beside her, she acknowledged she’d struck lucky in getting together with the ME.

  She switched the machine off, her calf muscles burning, and moved on to the elliptical, for her sins. After ten minutes, she’d had enough, and went over to tap Andy on the shoulder.

  “We’d better get going if we want to eat,” she said.

  Once they’d showered and had breakfast in the leisure centre café, she drove towards work, sighing at the case and how nothing seemed to be coming together. What did the number twenty-three mean? And the witch? She so wanted to believe there was just one killer, but with Jean Salter saying it had been a woman at Felicity’s, Helena couldn’t really discount that—unless the old woman was mistaken.

  “Shall we pop to see Jean again later?” she asked.

  “Jean?” Andy clearly wasn’t with it yet.

  “Salter. The old dear who saw the lady in the street.”

  “Ah. Why?” He sipped from his to-go cup of coffee.

  “To question her again to see if she’s sure of what she saw. She’s old…”

  “But she was ‘with it’ from what I remember. All right, she went off on a tangent, but otherwise she was okay.”

  “Hmm.” He was right. “So what then?” She sighed again, at a loss.

  “I don’t know. Keep trawling through their pasts, questioning people who knew them? Maybe Ol will find something to do with witches. It wouldn’t surprise me if the number is linked with it.”

  “Talking to everyone who knew them… Think about it. That’s basically the whole of Smaltern regarding Den. That’ll be a lot of man hours, and we don’t have that many men. It’ll take weeks, and in the meantime, he or she could kill again.” She turned into the station car park, frustrated beyond belief.

  Louise was standing by the back door, sucking on her vape.

  “We’re not that early, are we?” Helena switched the engine off. “She only usually smokes that before work and on her breaks.”

  “Nope, it’s two minutes to eight. Maybe she’s having a sneaky breather while it’s quiet.”

  Louise started work at seven, so if breakfast for those in the holding cells was already done and dusted, Helena couldn’t blame her for needing something to calm her nerves. Some detainees were nothing short of arseholes and would test even a saint’s patience.

  They got out of the car, Helena pressing the key button to blip the doors locked. She walked towards Louise, who smiled with what appeared to be relief.

  “Thank God you’re here, guv. I need someone to talk to.”

  “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

  Louise was paler than usual, and her hand holding the vape shook. “It’s been a horrible hour waiting for you to come in. There’s been another one. A stabbing, I mean.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” This was doing her head in. “How many is this bastard going to kill before we catch him?”

  The outside light above the door showcased Louise’s watery eyes. “It’s one of us who’s been stabbed.” Her lips wobbled, and she raised the vape to take an almighty puff. She blew out cherry-scented smoke.

  Helena’s brain stalled for a moment. “What?” Her guts rolled over. “Who?”

  “Clive.”

  “Oh my God…” Helena’s skin went ice cold, and she struggled to breathe for a second or two, her chest tight.

  “How?” Andy asked.

  “That’s the fucking thing,” Louise said, voice full of venom. “He spotted that bloody killer last night and followed him—well, about two this morning. He called in the fact he was tailing someone carrying a roll of plastic, of all things, and he thought it best to check out where he was going. Clive was parked in his car down Gold Street after sorting a domestic, and the bloke walked out from the cliff between two houses and then turned a corner, disappearing into the Seaview estate. Clive caught up with him, and the bloke dumped his stuff over a wall then climbed over. Clive
did the same, and the man was waiting for him on the other side. He stabbed him, grabbed his gear, and ran.”

  “Why the hell wasn’t I called?” Helena asked.

  “Because Clive isn’t dead, and the killer fucked off somewhere.”

  “Is Clive going to be all right?” Helena couldn’t get over this. It was all so bloody disturbing.

  “He had an op overnight, and I rang the hospital in an official capacity just now. They said he’ll be fine. It didn’t affect any major organs, it just went into his stomach, and not all the way either. About three inches.”

  “Three inches too many,” Helena snapped. “Sorry, I don’t mean to take it out on you. Christ, this is just…”

  “I know, but get this…” Louise scratched her head. “While Clive was on the grass after being stabbed, he called it in. He gave a description.”

  Talk about swings and roundabouts. While Helena was shocked and upset that Clive had been attacked, she was elated he’d clocked what his assailant looked like. And him having that roll of plastic, it was bound to be their killer, wasn’t it? Or at least Mark and Den’s. Was he using that to stop the blood spatter from spreading? It made sense.

  Or maybe I’m clutching at straws.

  “What time was he stabbed?” Andy asked.

  “Around two.”

  They all went inside, and Helena ordered Louise to have a sweet cup of tea. In the incident room, she sat at a spare desk and tapped her fingers on it while Andy accessed the information logged about Clive being stabbed.

  “From this description, the bloke matches who we saw on CCTV,” Andy said.

  “Good. The height?”

  “Yep, same as what Tom told you.”

  “Okay. So what we need to determine now is whether he was going to a victim’s house or leaving it and was on his way home.”

  Ol and Phil came in, and Helena passed on the news.

  “Fucking hell,” Phil muttered. “It’s getting personal now, picking one of our own.” He slumped into his chair, a puff of breath coming out of him.