by Mark Roberts
Edgar imagined the distant sound and tilted his head to gain a better perspective of the beasts on death row as they realised what was coming next.
Her eyes were wide, nostrils flaring as the stun gun was placed against her forehead. The first one he would always remember, his first one, the beast with no name and even less hope. He gripped the stun gun and pulled the trigger, felt the kick run up his arm like mercury in his veins.
He looked out at the staff car park, picked out his white Ford Transit van positioned between a worn-out Vauxhall and a no-hope Honda, both of them dwarfed by the height and width of his vehicle.
‘Edgar?’
The sound of his name melted all other sounds, near and far, into one euphoric blur.
‘Yes, Neil?’ he replied to his supervisor, eyeing up the tall young man standing alongside him, a lock of white-blond hair poking out from the net on his head, and looking straight ahead with a Christ-like gaze, as if seeing a messianic vision that was uniquely for him and him alone.
Neil clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder, bringing him back from the place he inhabited in his head.
‘Introduce yourself to Edgar,’ said Neil.
The young man scanned around Edgar’s eyes, avoiding looking directly into them.
‘My name is Wren but I cannot fly. Robin Wren. My mother had a sense of humour and a passion for ornithology. I dislike being called Robin. Wren will do.’
Edgar felt his heart turn to lead but smiled into Wren’s eyes, wishing to impress his supervisor with a gloss of empathy.
‘My name is Edgar McKee but I cannot open the door. My mother had no sense of humour to speak of and as for her passions, I’ve no idea as I didn’t know her one little bit. You can call me Edgar.’
Wren nodded and, as if from nowhere, he smiled with his eyes but the rest of his face remained set and calm. He laughed, three steady, robotic beats of distilled amusement.
‘I get it now. You are a McKee but you cannot open the door.’
‘OK, son,’ said Neil. ‘Go and stand over there for a minute. I need to talk to Edgar.’
As Wren walked away into space, he mimed turning a key in a lock and Edgar wondered at the child-like behaviour of a late adolescent in the early stages of manhood.
Neil placed his gloved hand on Edgar’s shoulder and even though he took it as an infringement of his privacy and his natural instinct was to stiffen, he maintained a relaxed posture.
‘I really am grateful to you for taking my son under your wing, Edgar.’
‘I’m sure he’s just a nice lad in need of a little guidance.’
‘He couldn’t get an apprenticeship anywhere else. God knows I tried just about everywhere. No one would have him even though he’s got an IQ of 143. It’s his autism holding him back. I had to fight to get him taken on here as an apprentice but as soon as I managed it you were the first person I thought of to place him with.’
‘Thank you.’ Edgar looked at Wren and then at his father. ‘First impression, Neil. He seems rather talkative for someone with autism,’ said Edgar.
‘Some autistic kids clam up,’ said Neil. ‘Some are chatterboxes. Some are in between. Wren’s a chatterbox. It’s not only that you’re head and shoulders the best at your job in the whole abattoir, it’s your temperament,’ he added. ‘There’s not many people who’ve got the patience to look after an autistic kid.’
‘I’ll teach him as best I can, Neil. I’ll protect him from the loudmouths in this shithole. If anyone wants to get at Wren, they’ll have to get past me first.’
Neil held out his hand and Edgar shook with him. He read the elongated glance that Neil threw at him as he eyed him up, drank in the silent admiration of his muscular bulk.
‘Don’t worry about him. He’ll learn a trade and I’ll build his confidence. Leave him with me. I know you’re busy.’
‘Thank you, Edgar.’
Edgar watched his supervisor walk away and turned to face Wren’s back.
‘Are you ready, Wren?’
Wren turned in what felt like slow motion.
‘You look tired, Edgar.’ Wren’s eyeballs shifted left and dithered right at speed, again and again. ‘You look tired. Very tired.’
Edgar pictured the scene in the bolting room. The world around him disappeared and, for a moment, all that he could see were cattle queuing up to die.
‘Wren, I am as fresh as a meadowlark at dawn.’
Bang. Down she goes. Lights out. Slump.
The reality of the end of all sentient life in a bitter nutshell.
‘Follow me,’ smiled Edgar. ‘I can tell, we’re going to be great mates.’
5
9.28 am
Driving past the University of Liverpool’s nursery on Grove Street, on the way to the Royal Hospital’s mortuary, Clay felt a tangle of nostalgia for the time when she dropped Philip off there, before he went up to big school.
Mothers and fathers walked hand in hand with small boys and girls, and all the children were well dressed against the cold and the rain.
Her mind somersaulted to the woman on the mudflats of the River Mersey and, at the red light at the junction of Grove Street and Myrtle Street, she whispered to herself, ‘I bet your parents used to wrap you up warm on cold winter mornings like this.’
On her dashboard, Clay’s iPhone rang out and when she saw COLE on display, she connected and went to speakerphone, before heading away from the green light.
‘Barney?’ She was filled with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation.
‘There’s only one missing person who fits your description for the woman on the Mersey mudflats.’
‘Go on?’
Clay turned left on to Pembroke Place, waiting for Cole to speak as he turned over paper on his desk.
‘Her name’s Annie Boyd. She’s twenty-five years old.’
‘Barney, does she live in a two-mile radius of the place she was found?’
‘She did. 358 Melbreck Road, not far from West Allerton station.’
‘Are you one hundred per cent certain it’s her?’
‘She’s a teacher. One hundred per cent attendance for work. But she hasn’t been in to work or heard of since she left the school last Thursday. I looked at the pictures Mason and Price sent me from the River Mersey of the dead woman. She’s got a mole on her upper left arm the size of a two pence piece. On her upper right arm there’s a tattoo of a bluebird in flight. Her parents supplied us with an image of their daughter on holiday in Crete when they reported her missing. She’s wearing a sleeveless white blouse. Annie Boyd’s got the exact same mole and the exact same tattoo, both in the right places.’
‘Email me close shots of her mole and the tattoo. Close shots that give away absolutely nothing else about the condition of her body.’
‘Leave it with me.’
She continued on to London Road, felt swamped in the dense traffic that was slowed down by the rain.
‘And Barney, find out who her dentist was. Ask them to drop everything and make it to the mortuary with Annie’s dental records. Good job, well done. Thank you.’
As she spoke, Clay worked out in her mind the quickest route back from the mortuary to Melbreck Road.
‘Anything else, Eve?’
‘Same as ever. Keep me posted of anything that comes in, Barney.’
She disconnected the call and, stuck at the lights, prepared herself to look again at Annie Boyd’s disfigured body in the mortuary, just over a hundred metres away. In the well of her recent memory, the young woman looked up at her into torchlight from the mud of the Mersey and the effect of her dead eyes made the soles of Clay’s feet tingle with pinpricks of heat.
Your eyes, thought Clay with a sorrowful heart, are as dead as you and all your dreams of life and love and happiness.
6
9.44 am
Norma Maguire looked into the round compact mirror sitting in the palm of her hand at her only good facial feature. Her lips. She drew a scarlet lipsti
ck across the surface of her top lip and was glad it was the only part of her face she could see in the glass.
She refreshed the coating of lipstick on her lower lip and checked that her recently whitened teeth were not stained red.
There was only one way to do it. Small but tortuous steps.
Norma looked at herself in tiny but painful sections, tracking down the lifelong hopeless cause: she was vile to look at.
Her face was lopsided, constructed of two halves that clearly didn’t make a whole. Her left eye was a centimetre higher than the right, which stared at a distinctly odd angle into space, away from its dull and lifeless partner. Within the frame of her ravaged skin, her nose looked like it had been built by the hand of a malicious child and she recalled for the thousand and thousandth time the overall effect of her despicable face: horrid.
Happy birthday, Norma…
Over a chasm of nearly four decades, she heard her mother’s words as she handed her the mirror now in her hand. Mother had wrapped it in gold paper and presented it to her on the morning of her thirteenth birthday.
She watched her mother as she walked out of the large front room, drawn by the ringing of the phone into the cavernous hall outside.
Her mother’s voice danced as she spoke, her tone masterful, small words that seemed to fill the whole house as she answered the call.
Norma picked up the only photograph on her desk.
Mother. Aged thirty or thereabouts. Hair tied up in intricate patterns in a fashion from a classical age. Beautiful. Poised and ladylike. Dressed in a white gown, thin straps on her shapely bare shoulders. Smiling easily into the eye of the camera. Norma placed the framed photograph back on her desk.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She made out the shape of the person outside her office door through the frosted glass.
Slim, exquisitely slim. Model tall. Young as the rosy dawn.
‘Come on in, Fran,’ said Norma, placing her little mirror and the Christian Dior lipstick back in her Gucci handbag.
The door opened slowly and Francesca Christie stepped into the office. The smile on her face lit up her pretty features but her body language was riddled with nervous tension.
‘You wanted to see me, Norma?’ asked Francesca as she drifted towards the chair on the other side of Norma’s desk.
‘Yes, yes, yes, I do want to see you.’
Norma indicated the seat and Francesca sat down.
‘Very well done, Fran, on closing down the deal on the Elm Hall Drive property. Every other estate agent on Allerton Road who failed, failed miserably, to offload that nightmare house will be kicking themselves.’
Norma watched the stiffness in Francesca’s shoulders ease and the darkness behind the smile on her face fade.
‘Maybe, Fran, we should have called it Nightmare on Elm Hall Drive.’
Norma laughed and Francesca joined in but she knew the young estate agent didn’t understand the joke. ‘It’s a reference to an old American horror movie, Fran. Just as a matter of interest, do you like horror movies?’
‘I’m more into romantic comedies.’
‘Me too, me too.’
Norma processed the information Francesca had offered and remembered the What’s On page in the local free paper that she advertised her properties in.
‘Why? Why have you called me in, Norma?’
‘So, how’s your newly repaired laptop serving you, Fran?’
‘It’s been great, Norma. No problems at all. The virus that was driving me mad – it’s sorted.’
‘Glad to hear it, Fran.’ She loved the cut-back sound of her employee’s name, the music of abbreviation.
‘I do have a viewing in half an hour…’
‘Yes, yes, yes, I know you’re busy. I get that.’
‘Then…?’
‘I’m worried about you, Fran. You know I don’t have children of my own and you know I’m old enough to be your mother…’
‘Where? Where’s this going, Norma?’
Norma nodded.
‘I’m not going to beat around the bush. When your laptop went away for repair, I received a report back from the IT technician who had a good old root through your history in the process.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know the IT technician had the authority to do that.’
‘Fran, please don’t tell me you didn’t read our IT policy when you joined us.’
‘I did. Of course I did…’
‘Then you must have forgotten that any company technology we use, laptops, iPhones, whatever, is subject to investigation. I haven’t invaded your civil liberties. Ultimately it’s my property you’ve been using and I have every right to make sure that my property isn’t being abused.’
Norma pushed a thin card file towards Francesca.
‘Do you want to open it or shall I tell you what’s in there?’
As Francesca opened the flap and slid out a small sheaf of papers, Norma watched the colour rise in her throat and chase up the channels of her unblemished skin to her cheeks, saw her face flood with pure embarrassment.
‘I’m sorry, Norma.’
She placed the papers back inside the file and closed the cover.
‘Fran, you’ve been going on to internet dating sites during office hours. During my time.’
‘It was only during my breaks.’
‘The times and dates of your many visits to these sites are listed in that file.’
Norma took a tissue from the box on her desk and handed it to Francesca.
‘Don’t get upset, Fran. I haven’t brought you in here to read the riot act to you.’
Francesca made eye contact with Norma.
‘Then why have you brought me in?’
‘Come here…’
Norma turned her wheelchair around to gaze out of the window overlooking the junction of Allerton Road and Penny Lane, the curve of her back turned on her employee. As she did so, she recalled a time, over thirty years ago, before the accident, when she had no need of a wheelchair and what wet sand felt like on the soles of her feet and the pure magic of swimming in the Irish Sea off Crosby Beach.
‘I’m worried about you,’ said Norma. ‘These internet dating sites are a menace. Everything the IT specialist told me that you’d posted about yourself was accurate and true. Is everyone else, these men you’ve been communicating with, are they all above board and honest? I think that’s highly unlikely. Don’t you?’
‘I’m careful.’
‘I suppose the woman whose body was washed up in Warrington in the summer would have said she was careful too… You look puzzled. You didn’t hear about it?’
‘No.’
‘He scalped her and took the skin from her face. According to the police, she met him on an internet dating site, Pebbles On The Beach.’
The tense silence in the room was counterpointed by the hydraulics of a passing double-decker bus beneath the window, and in the sky above, rotating blades chopping the air as the police helicopter travelled in their direction down Church Road.
‘I heard a report on Radio Merseyside this morning on my way in to work. There’s another body been found closer to home. Otterspool Promenade.’
Norma watched the helicopter as it tracked a stolen car burning a red light and screaming across the junction into Penny Lane and in the direction of Sefton Park, sirens following and a trail of chaos in its wake.
‘I can instruct you not to use my IT equipment on my time to go on these sites, but I can’t do anything about what you do between the hours of five in the afternoon and nine in the morning when you’re at home. Fran, I would hate anything horrible to happen to you. Do not put yourself at risk like this.’
‘I’m sorry, Norma. Since Dad died and Patrick walked out on me… I’m OK when I’m selling properties… it’s just…’
Francesca looked at Norma, and the words poured from her.
‘There’s a Dad-shaped hole in one piece of your heart and a Patrick-shaped gap in another part,’
said Norma. ‘Come over here, Fran.’
Norma felt the side of Francesca’s thigh brush against her arm and drank in her sweet natural perfume.
‘You’re looking for a good man, Fran?’
‘There are good men out there, Norma. I just don’t seem to meet them.’
‘You think you’re going to find a quality man on Pebbles On The Beach?’
‘I hope so. Pebbles On The Beach is for people who want commitment. It’s for men and women who want marriage, children and a future. That’s why some people sneer at it. Because it’s seen as old-fashioned. Well, I am old-fashioned and I’m not afraid to admit that.’
‘Be careful, Fran. There are devils out there masquerading as nice, wholesome men.’
She glanced up at the way Fran’s naturally blonde hair hung down on either side of her face and saw great sadness in her eyes.
‘What can you see, Fran?’ Norma pointed out of the window and down at the pavement.
‘People.’
‘Men?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you met a man, say, on the street, you mightn’t think it but from the moment you clapped eyes on him, you’d be reading his body language and receiving chemical information about him that would make you either want to get involved with him or run a mile. You don’t get that incredibly personal and powerful information from the internet. Promise me you’ll stop going on to these dating sites.’
‘I promise you.’
‘There are other ways to meet men. Nice men. Men who won’t hurt or harm you.’
‘How though? Nowadays…’
Norma looked out of the window and saw the police helicopter circling the space around Penny Lane.
‘Well, would you look at that now? That’s it.’ Norma clapped her hands together. ‘You could always steal a car and get arrested by a strapping police helicopter pilot. Now, wouldn’t that make for a zany rom com?’