Hope to Die: A gripping new serial killer thriller (The DS Nathan Cody series)

by David Jackson

  ‘We could request a search warrant. Search his car and his house.’

  Cody shakes his head. ‘We need more to go on. It’s all supposition at the moment. The only thing we know he’s guilty of is a slight deviation from the truth. And maybe that’s the extent of it. He could be a perfectly nice guy, doing his best to bring up his kid as a single parent. Besides . . .’

  ‘Besides what?’

  ‘Our killer’s too clever to be caught that way. He’s not going to leave incriminating evidence lying around where we can find it.’

  ‘If he’s that good, how are we ever going to catch him?’

  ‘God knows,’ says Cody.

  The irony of the remark escapes him.

  28

  He remembers . . .

  *

  Nine years old. Wanting to be an individual. Wanting to spend more time away from his mother. Wanting to go in search of his own thoughts and opinions.

  Questioning things . . .

  The questions crawl into his consciousness when he least expects them. They are like dark, scuttling insects, biting into his mind.

  What if the Bible isn’t true? the insects say. What if your mother isn’t always right? What if there isn’t a God? What if Jesus doesn’t love you? What if nobody loves you?

  He slaps them back with ferocity as soon as they appear. He screws up his eyes and grits his teeth and banishes the vermin to the blackness at the back of his head, where the unthinkable thoughts live.

  But they always return, bringing with them their stings and their mandibles and their sucking mouth parts to feed on his brain.

  He is at the barber’s.

  An innocent, mundane episode in a life, one would think.

  The barber’s name is Antonio. Or at least that’s what’s on his sign outside. It might not be his real name, but he has a black moustache to prop up the lie.

  The boy’s mother leaves strict instructions with Antonio. Nothing fancy, she insists. A straightforward boy’s haircut. And no lotions, potions, waxes or mousses either. He’s not entering a beauty contest, and he’s not a poodle.

  And then she exits the shop, off to round up pork chops or sausages or something equally unimaginative for their tea.

  The boy settles into the hi-tech chair that makes him feel like the captain of a spaceship. He stares at himself in the mirror and wonders what Jesus has against unusual hairstyles.

  Antonio begins his work. The clippers first. The boy feels the vibration against his skull, the buzz through his teeth. He watches the pieces of hair drop onto his shoulders like petals from a dying flower.

  He closes his eyes as Antonio sprays scented water onto his head from a plastic bottle. Some of it runs down his face and tickles his neck.

  With a flourish, Antonio raises his hands and displays the tools of his artistry: the comb and the scissors. His eyes take on the manic intensity of a sculptor or an oil painter, and then he launches his attack on the boy’s head.

  It stops within a few snips.

  Antonio parts the boy’s damp hair to one side, then the other. He peers at the boy’s crown as he does so. The boy watches the puzzling behaviour in the mirror, and wonders why the barber has suddenly become so indecisive.

  Antonio issues a short whistle to his colleague seated at the rear of the shop. The burly man abandons his copy of the Daily Mirror and comes to stand at his colleague’s side. Antonio repeats his actions with the comb while the other man looks on. Some inaudible whispering ensues, accompanied by some nodding. The boy feels he should ask a question, but also that to do so would be getting above his station. Perhaps he has a particularly unusual head, he thinks. Or perhaps Antonio is considering a daringly radical haircut, despite the constraints laid down earlier.

  The boy sits and awaits the outcome with interest.

  But what follows does not seem right. It does not seem to the boy that this will in any way satisfy what his mother has ordered.

  Antonio whips away the cape from around the boy’s neck. Tells him he can’t do any more for him. Asks him to sit on the bench at the back of the room until his mother reappears.

  Confused, the boy does as he is told. He looks searchingly at Antonio as he drags his feet across the tiled floor, but gets no answers. When he perches his backside on the edge of the padded fake-leather bench, he wonders whether he has done something wrong. The atmosphere seems like a pale imitation of the situations he gets into at home, as though his mother has deliberately deposited an aura of dissatisfaction here in the expectation that he will undoubtedly do something to incur her wrath.

  But surely he did only what he was told? He sat in the big spaceship chair and said nothing and did nothing except to look straight ahead. What possible harm can he have done with that?

  Nothing, he tells himself. I’ve done nothing wrong. You can ask Jesus. He’ll tell you. I didn’t do anything.

  But still he worries. He swings his legs above the floor, because if he tries to keep them still they will tremble. He feels sick, too. When he straightens his spine and cranes his neck, he can see himself in the mirror, and he thinks he looks the colour of old paper.

  Something runs down his nose. He wonders if he is sweating profusely, but then he realises his hair is still damp. Why have they left it like that? Why is it that they can suddenly no longer bear to be anywhere near him?

  It occurs to him to run away. To drop from his seat and dash across the shop and fling open the door and sprint down the street.

  Will they run after me? he wonders. Will they try to catch me? And if they do, will they take me to the police for not paying for half a haircut?

  Or will they not care? Perhaps they will simply be glad to be rid of me. Perhaps they will breathe a sigh of relief when this horrible little kid is out of their sight.

  Because that’s how he feels right now. Hated, unwanted, alone. It’s a cocktail of negativity that comes readily to him these days. Self-esteem lost the battle a long time ago.

  A tinkle of a bell as his mother steps through the door. There is already a scowl on her face, as though she detected the wrongness in here from fifty yards away.

  She looks at the boy. He in turns says nothing, because he has nothing to offer.

  Antonio moves away from his current customer. He approaches the boy’s mother. More hushed tones and serious faces. His mother’s face takes on a look of disbelief, embarrassment and anger. She pulls a purse from her bag, but Antonio waves away the offer of payment, then returns to his customer.

  The boy studies his mother for further clues. It seems to him that she is turning redder by the second.

  She takes his hand firmly in hers. Drags him from the bench and out of the shop. He doesn’t make a sound, because he senses she is on that precipice again. She is on the verge of dropping into an uncontrolled free-fall of vitriol. He doesn’t want that – not in a public place.

  She pulls him quickly along the street, towards their house. He has to run to keep up with her pace. And then she begins muttering.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she says. ‘The shame of it. The embarrassment. They’ll be talking about us, you know that, don’t you? We’ll be the local laughing stock. Everywhere we go, people will be pointing and staring at us. Oh, the shame!’

  He decides to speak up, now that she has broken the silence. ‘Mummy, I don’t know what—’

  ‘Shut up!’ she says, and yanks his arm forward, hurting his shoulder. ‘Keep that mouth closed, you disgusting little boy. I don’t want to hear your excuses. Save them for your prayers, because I’ll tell you what, God isn’t happy with you right now.’

  He wonders how she knows this – how she has received the message from God so quickly. But he decides it’s one of those questions he must never voice. It’s one of the insects in his head that must not be allowed to see the light of day.

  He wishes God would talk to him, too, because he is still none the wiser.

  What he does have, in spades, is fear.
Wrath is in the air. He feels it building like an electrical charge in the clouds above. And he is the lightning rod, exposed and alone, knowing that the full force of that vengeance is about to strike him and burn him.

  When she pulls him through the front door, it is with a force that causes him to lift from the ground. He lands in the hallway. Stares at the dark silhouette of his mother against the doorway onto the street.

  She slams the door. Framed pictures on the wall jump as if startled. He is trapped in here now. Away from prying eyes. She can do what she wants with him.

  ‘Turn around,’ she orders.

  He doesn’t want to turn around. Doesn’t want to be blind to what might be coming his way.

  ‘Mummy, I—’

  ‘TURN AROUND!’

  The very energy in her words is enough to spin him on his heels. He stands shaking in the dim hallway. Ahead of him is the staircase. He wants to run up those stairs. He could race into the bathroom and lock the door. But he knows he won’t.

  A thick gloom sits at the top of the stairs. He can imagine figures hidden there in the darkness, watching. Grinning as they wait for their entertainment to begin. There are no good spirits up there. No angels to protect him.

  The smacking of his bare legs ranks among her most ferocious to date. It comes in rapid bursts, in time to the accompaniment of her shrieking voice. His body moves forward without his conscious control, desperate to avoid the pain. He falls face forward onto the stairs, and still the slaps resound and burn his young skin. For a while, his screaming drowns out her words, but eventually they seep through:

  ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Cleanliness is next to godliness . . .’

  And still he doesn’t understand.

  He suspects he will be sent up to his room not understanding. This whole lesson, ostensibly being branded on him with the rod of discipline, will for ever have failed to heighten his wisdom.

  But his mother has not finished. Not by a long chalk.

  Panting with exertion, she drags her sobbing child away from the stairs. Pushes and prods him to stumble ahead of her like a captured enemy soldier. In the kitchen she scrapes a wooden chair away from the table and leans on his shoulders to make him sit on it.

  She moves around the chair to stand in front of him. Through the blur of his tears he can barely make out her form as she brings her face to within inches of his.

  ‘Do. Not. Move.’

  Her words act like glue, sticking him to the chair. It’s as though he is under a hypnotic spell.

  And then his mother is gone. Out of the kitchen. Out of the house, it seems. He hears the front door being slammed again, but still he is not convinced he is safe. He wonders if this is a test of his obedience. Wonders if she is standing in the hallway, waiting for him to break her commandment. God’s commandment, too: Honour thy father and thy mother. The forces stacked against him are overwhelming.

  And so he stays exactly where he has been put. He cries and he wails and he tries to overcome the red-hot pain through sheer willpower. He calls to God and to Jesus to help him in his hour of need, because that’s what they do, isn’t it? They are on the side of the weak and the innocent and the good of heart.

  But perhaps he is not so innocent, not so good. His mother must know best, surely? She knows everything about the Bible. She knows what is right.

  So where does that leave him? What does that make him? An irredeemable sinner, doomed to suffer for eternity?

  Is he so utterly worthless?

  When he hears her return, he wills his heart to stop. It would be a mercy, he thinks.

  He is only nine years old.

  She comes back into the kitchen. He starts to turn towards her, but she orders him to face forward, and his head snaps back into position.

  She places a hand on his left shoulder. ‘I have to do this,’ she tells him. ‘I have to fight the Devil. I don’t know how you became so unclean, but we have to get rid of them.’

  He sniffs wetly. ‘Get rid of what, Mummy? I don’t under—’

  ‘The insects, boy! The insects in your head.’

  The explanation shocks him to the core. He wonders how she can possibly have seen into his mind – how she can possibly know about the dark thoughts that scuttle around in his head. But there it is. She knows. She sees all. God must have spoken to her.

  And then he hears the angry buzz. As though his mother is going to launch an attack on the insects with one even larger and more ferocious.

  ‘Head down,’ she orders.

  He does as he is told. He expects the same sensation he experienced in the barber’s: the soft vibration on the nape of his neck.

  Instead he gets a violent scraping against his skull, as though she is trying to sand off his skin. And it is not confined to his neck: it carries up and over the back of his head, and right across to his forehead. Massive chunks of hair drop onto his lap.

  ‘Mummy!’ he screams. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Shush!’ she tells him. ‘You brought this on yourself. You’re dirty. You could infest others. The insects could jump onto me. I have to get rid of them. Do you think Jesus would want anything to do with such a filthy boy?’

  And so she continues. She tracks the clippers over every inch of his head, dragging the device so close against his scalp it sometimes chews a piece out of it. She seems deaf and blind to his signals of distress. He yells and he shakes and he pleads until it feels his heart will explode, but she carries on regardless.

  And then it is done. The gnashing teeth of the clippers go silent. His mother goes silent, too.

  The boy’s head is still bowed. His eyes are closed. He doesn’t want to move. Doesn’t want to see. Doesn’t want to exist.

  ‘There,’ says his mother finally. ‘Now you’re clean again.’

  He notices a slight catch in her voice, as though she has just comprehended the atrocity she has perpetrated. But he doesn’t turn to check. It doesn’t seem to matter now.

  He hears her leave the room. If he cared, he would call after her. But the caring has been driven out of him.

  He doesn’t know how long he sits there. The tears have dried to a crust on his cheeks. His throat burns with all the work it has done.

  Eventually he stands up. His legs seem to move of their own accord, dragging him upstairs to the sanctuary of his bedroom. Throughout the short journey he keeps his eyes downcast, as though any reminder of his surroundings is too painful to bear.

  When he gets to his room, he lowers himself gently onto the edge of his bed. From somewhere deep within the mattress, a coil pings his arrival.

  He knows he is precisely opposite the mirror on his wall. He will have to look up at some point. But first he has to gather the strength.

  Perhaps it’s not too bad, he tells himself. Perhaps it seemed much worse than it actually is. Perhaps his mother has hairdressing skills of which he knows nothing.

  He tells himself all these things. Positive thoughts to turn dark into light.

  Slowly, he raises his head. Blinks his exhausted eyes to clarify the image.

  A pale stranger looks back at him.

  He rises from the bed. Again the mattress pings. He shuffles towards the mirror – closer, closer – until he is certain.

  And then he screams.

  He had thought he had nothing left in him, but these screams are long and loud and shrill. They could rouse the whole neighbourhood. His mother cannot fail to hear them.

  But she does not come. She does not hasten to the side of her distraught nine-year-old child. She does not cuddle him or reassure him with soothing words. Instead, she leaves him to wallow in his misery, to bathe in the echoes of his cries.

  It’s all in God’s plan, she will tell him later. He moves in mysterious ways.

  She will say, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  All this happens on a Friday evening. A small
mercy is that he has the weekend to recover. In that time he does not leave the house. His cuts scab over. And he thinks, if he looks really, really hard, that his hair grows back a little. Not much, admittedly, but just enough to make it less noteworthy, less extreme. Perhaps he can get away with it now. Perhaps it is not such an attention grabber. Another week would be even better, but his mother isn’t going to permit that.

  And even if people do notice, doesn’t he look like a hard-case now? Doesn’t he look like someone who would smash your teeth in if you even look the wrong way at him? Isn’t this the type of kid who has a bull mastiff and a fast temper and a fear of nobody?

  He gets his answers on the way to school. Even with his mother at his side, the stares are not deflected. Children and adults alike turn towards him with wide eyes and wide mouths. Sometimes they point. Sometimes they wear wounding grins.

  And when the shielding shadow of his mother is withdrawn as he crosses the school threshold, the hordes find their courage and approach. They do not see the tough skinhead he managed to perceive through his blinkered optimism. They do not see that his hair has miraculously blossomed into an inconspicuous style in the space of a weekend.

  He knows this because of the taunts, the cruel jibes. They call him ‘Jug Ears’ and ‘Belsen Boy’ and ‘Wingnut’ and ‘Slaphead’. These are not terms of respect or endearment. These are barbed spears that are meant to hurt.

  Because being hurt is his lot, it seems.

  It’s the cross he is meant to bear.

  29

  He’s missed something.

  Cody stares at his computer screen. He flicks through report after report, statement after statement, but it’s not jumping out at him.