The Blissfully Dead

by Louise Voss

  The next time Chloe glanced across at Jess she was gazing contemplatively at the large tattoo of Shawn Barrett that covered most of her left forearm. Her mum had apparently gone nuts when she’d got it done at the age of fifteen, threatened to report the tattoo parlour, but Jess hadn’t cared.

  Now, Jess was biting the inside of her top lip to stop herself smiling and, with her right forefinger, she stroked the smudgy cheek of Shawn’s tattoo.

  If Chloe had had to describe her friend’s appearance, she would have said it was ecstatic.

  ‘Are you on drugs?’ Chloe asked. ‘Did you get some E?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. Drugs are for losers. Now be quiet, all right?’ And she started to sing, belting out the words like her life depended on it.

  Chapter 6

  Day 3 – Patrick

  Mummy, you put the triangle in there.’

  Gill beamed and slotted the triangle through the triangular hole in the apparatus. ‘Here, Bonnie, do the circle.’

  Bonnie took the proffered plastic ball, scrutinised it for a moment, then handed it back to her mother, shaking her head so vigorously that her pink cheeks wobbled. ‘Mummy.’

  Gill posted the circle, then handed a square one to Patrick. ‘Daddy do the square?’ she asked Bonnie.

  Bonnie pointedly turned her back on him, as though he had just made some devastatingly insulting personal comment to her. ‘No. I want Mummy to do it.’

  Patrick shrugged, feeling ridiculously slighted. Bonnie seemed more than fine, playing with Gill as if nothing had ever happened – although of course she wouldn’t remember it; how could she, she’d only been five months old, and that was as it should be. It would be terrible if she recoiled at Gill’s touch.

  Patrick remembered it, though.

  He knew he would never, ever forget it. The sight of Gill’s purple fingermarks on their baby’s neck would accompany him to the grave, her tiny limp body within seconds of eternal lifelessness . . .

  As if she could read his thoughts, Gill looked up at him from where she was crouching on the rug next to Bonnie and her toys. She gave him a slow, tentative smile, the neediness of which made Patrick’s teeth clench. This is all so screwed up, he thought. She had recovered; they had the chance for a fresh start. He knew deep down she would never try to hurt Bonnie again, she’d never wanted to in the first place, she’d been in the grip of a devastating bout of postnatal psychosis. As long as they resigned themselves to being a one-child family, there was no reason to be fearful. Bonnie was now a happy, normal two-and-a-half-year-old. Gill was his beloved wife, and they were a family again. He and Bonnie could move back in here with Gill tomorrow – the social worker had already signed Gill off and she could be left alone with Bonnie all day if she wanted now, after a few months of supervised visits.

  But the problem was, he wasn’t sure that he felt anything at all for his wife, bar a deep sense of sorrow and pity. How could he go back to sharing his bed, his life, his heart with someone he wasn’t sure he even loved anymore?

  Their house was immaculate, far better than it had been in all the months it was rented out on short-term lets. Patrick looked around the room.

  ‘New picture? It’s nice.’ He gestured towards a large canvas on the wall – abstract artily out-of-focus petals. Privately he thought Gill’s tastes must have changed. The old Gill would have dismissed that as anodyne or too predictable. Perhaps that was a consequence of being incarcerated in a secure mental unit for over a year . . .

  Gill actually blushed. ‘I got some new scatter cushions too,’ she said, pointing at the sofa. The cushions were the exact same shade of crimson as the petals in the picture.

  ‘Yes, I noticed,’ said Patrick, although he hadn’t. ‘Lovely.’

  ‘The kitchen was really dirty,’ Gill said, helping Bonnie slot jigsaw pieces into place. ‘Those tenants were supposed to have had it professionally cleaned when they left, but they clearly didn’t. We should complain to the letting agent. Who was the agent?’

  She hated this, Patrick realised. She hated the fact that he’d had to do all the work involved in the temporary lets of their house, negotiating with the letting agents when she didn’t even know who they were because she’d been locked in a mental unit, having daily therapy while he was approving the inventory, checking references, having to live with his mum and dad, parent Bonnie and work full-time . . . It was as though she felt she could never make it up to him.

  Often, Patrick also thought that she never would be able to. ‘Does it matter now?’ he said, more testily than he had intended. ‘We’ve got the house back.’

  Gill sat back and held her arms wide for Bonnie to sit in the V-shape made by her outstretched legs. She gazed at him thoughtfully. ‘Yes. But we aren’t all living in it, are we?’ Bonnie snuggled into her lap, sucking her thumb, and Patrick regarded the two pairs of identical hazel eyes scrutinising him.

  He stood up and walked away, cursing his cowardice.

  ‘I’m still not ready, Gill,’ he said, without looking at her. When he glanced back from the kitchen, she was hugging Bonnie silently, dropping her lips to Bonnie’s soft brown hair. Patrick felt like a heel. She must know how hard it was for him to live with his mum and dad and have to share a room with Bonnie, and yet he still didn’t want to come home. That must be making her feel terrible, he thought.

  He put the kettle on, for something to do, and stood at the kitchen counter listening to the water heat up as Bonnie chatted obliviously to Gill in the next room. She seemed to be telling her about some penguins she knew. Patrick smiled, then the smile dropped away as he realised that every day he prevaricated was another day Bonnie was being deprived of her mother’s continuous and stabilising presence.

  It was doing his head in. Why could he not just go for it? Fling himself back into the marriage, for Bonnie’s sake if no-one else’s?

  Throwing tea bags into two mugs, he did what he always did when his thoughts reached this impasse: he thought about something else instead.

  He remembered the vigil last night. All those big versions of what Bonnie would become all too soon – little girls in almost-adult bodies and scaled-down adult clothes – well, prostitutes’ clothes, in many cases. He grinned briefly, thinking that he sounded just like his mother.

  The girls last night had been torn between simmering post-gig euphoria – bordering on hysteria – and the pressure to be hushed and respectful. Patrick suspected that the murder of one of their own was making these girls feel even more excited, blood and hormones at boiling point, than they would at the end of a normal OnTarget gig. At least he and Carmella hadn’t had to sit through the gig themselves. When he’d found out that the vigil was taking place, he’d decided that their attendance at the actual concert wasn’t necessary. The vigil had been an unexpected bonus – a great chance to talk to the girls in his official capacity.

  Many of them had got so hot from dancing and screaming inside the stadium that they had stripped down to tiny crop tops and removed the tights that they’d probably sported at the start of the evening in the chill February air. Half-naked, flushed girls holding lit candles was definitely at odds with the funereal atmosphere and Rose’s poor crying parents. He had looked around him at the thirty or forty girls who were all gaping at him as though he’d been beamed down from Mars, trying to spot anyone who seemed particularly uncomfortable or as if they had something to say. But even when he’d exhorted them to come forward, none of them had appeared flustered or anything other than curious, or ghoulishly fascinated by the whole affair.

  Surely one of them must know something. Why had Rose gone to that hotel? Had she been dating an older man – the sort of man who would invite her up to a hotel room? He’d asked her mum, but Sally Sharp had been utterly convinced that Rose had no time for boys her own age, let alone older men. Rose had been a young fifteen who had never had a boyfriend and who had only had fou
r, virtual, loves in her unformed and now unfinished life – the members of OnTarget. The girl had apparently slept, eaten, breathed OnTarget. Her whole life revolved around them – trying to get their attention online, buying CDs and downloads, concert tickets and merchandise with whatever birthday or babysitting money she happened to have. Her only friends were other OnTarget fans – Patrick had taken the names of all the ones that Sally Sharp knew of, and obviously he or Carmella would be talking to them as soon as they could – but he wondered if Wendy was right, and this was a simple case of an online predator. So far, the investigations of her online history and phone records had shown nothing interesting, just endless meaningless chit-chat with other fans.

  There had been one interesting thing – apparently she had used a good chunk of data in the hours before her death, showing that she had been online on her phone. But there was no way for the phone company to track what she’d been doing.

  ‘Pat!’ Gill’s voice from the living room had taken on a familiar edge of exasperation, one that he hadn’t heard since before . . . well, since they all lived together. Patrick didn’t like to refer to the incident, even in his thoughts, if he could possibly avoid it.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Bonnie’s been calling you. Could you bring her some juice please?’

  ‘Dooce, Daddy!’ Bonnie echoed, in a matching tone of exasperation.

  Hm, thought Patrick, she’s perfectly willing to talk to me when she wants something. That’s probably not likely to change for the next sixteen years or so.

  ‘Coming, darling,’ he said – and then immediately felt guilty because he hoped that Gill hadn’t thought the ‘darling’ had been addressed to her.

  Solving murders was easier than this, he thought. At that moment he wished he was back in the incident room, a place where he didn’t have to make any emotional decisions further than what sort of biscuit to have with his coffee.

  As he carried the juice in to Bonnie, his mobile began to vibrate in his pocket. Groping for it, he trod on a stray piece from the shape sorter, lurched and spilled the juice down his leg.

  ‘Ow, shit, f—’

  He just managed to stop himself from saying more naughty words.

  As Bonnie made a beeline for the remains of her drink, he answered the phone. ‘Lennon.’

  It was Carmella. ‘Hey, Patrick. We just got the call from Daniel Hamlet.’ The pathologist who had been assigned to this case. ‘He says he’s ready to see you. He sounded excited.’

  Chapter 7

  Day 3 – Patrick

  Of all the many people Patrick came into contact with through his work, Daniel Hamlet was probably the man he most admired and respected. The forensic pathologist was deadly serious about his professional responsibilities, Patrick thought, wincing at the involuntary pun. A black man in his mid-forties, with hair that was greying around the temples, Hamlet had shown rare emotion the last time they had worked together. But today he was back to his earnest, serious self, no sign of the excitement Carmella had mentioned on the phone.

  ‘I hear you have something interesting to share?’ Patrick asked as they walked towards the lab where the autopsy had been carried out.

  ‘That’s right. But first I want to show you something.’

  Rose was laid out ready on a metal table, covered with a sheet. Even though Patrick had seen her body already, it still caused him to gulp down air as he approached. She looked even paler now, but more serene, removed from the bloody scene of her death.

  ‘So,’ Hamlet began. ‘The cause of death is clear – she was strangled. The murderer used a two-handed grip, suggesting that they may not be particularly strong. Of average strength, I would guess.’

  ‘He used his hands?’

  ‘Yes. Assuming it is a he.’

  Patrick nodded. He had erroneously made that assumption before.

  ‘There is no sign of sexual assault, which is surprising. No semen. No sign of Rose taking part in any sexual activity at all, consensual or otherwise.’

  ‘Was she a virgin?’

  Hamlet kept his eyes on the corpse. ‘It’s difficult to tell. I would say very possibly. But she definitely wasn’t raped. Of course, when I say no sexual assault, I mean nothing vaginal. Stripping her, touching her body . . . that is assault, of course. But there is no evidence that the murderer derived sexual gratification.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘She was in good health, a little overweight but nothing wrong with her at all. She ate a burger and fries an hour or two before her death, so it might be worth seeing if anyone spotted her in McDonald’s or similar that evening.’

  Patrick made a note.

  ‘Now, the really interesting thing . . .’

  ‘The little cuts.’

  ‘Yes. The cuts are all so small that, though each one bled a little, they weren’t enough for her to bleed to death, even if the murderer waited a long time. The purpose of the cuts was undoubtedly to cause pain. Especially as perfume was sprayed into each one.’

  The smell of the perfume had faded, but the scent came back to Lennon now – the way it had filled the hotel room, stinging his eyes and nose.

  ‘It would have hurt like hell,’ Hamlet said. ‘Like a hundred little wasp stings. Worst would have been these, on the softer and more sensitive parts of her flesh – her thighs, the soles of her feet. Unless it was part of some strange ritual I’ve never heard of, it seems clear this was done to cause her pain. A very unusual form of torture. Slow, painstaking and not too intense, but the cumulative effect would be quite awful.’

  They both stared at the body, concentrating on the miniscule marks.

  ‘The murderer used a very sharp knife. Small, with a blade around four inches long. A pocket knife, but too sharp to be a penknife or Swiss army knife.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’ Patrick asked.

  Hamlet nodded. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. The interesting thing is that yes, I have.’

  Patrick felt it then: that tingle; the fizz in his bloodstream that acted like a narcotic; the rush that made him addicted to this job. He waited for Hamlet to go on, the pathologist seeming to enjoy the build-up of anticipation, like he was announcing the winner of the latest series of Britain’s Got Talent.

  ‘There were marks like these on a body I examined three months ago.’

  He produced a file, which he’d clearly dug out earlier, and opened it. Immediately, Patrick felt confused. He had expected to see details of an autopsy on another teenage girl. But the date of birth of this victim was 1931. Her name was Nancy Marr, and she had lived in Wimbledon. Patrick vaguely remembered the case. He flicked through the autopsy report. Her body had been found in her flat, killed by strangulation. No sign of sexual assault.

  ‘Here,’ Daniel said, sliding a photograph from the file. It was a close-up of the woman’s torso, showing her collarbone and upper chest. There were around twenty little cuts on the skin, just like the ones on Rose’s flesh.

  ‘Shit,’ Patrick said, his voice hushed. ‘Was she naked like Rose?’

  ‘No.’ Hamlet pointed to the relevant text in the report. ‘Her top had been ripped just below the neck, seemingly as the result of a struggle, possibly the assailant grabbing hold of her before strangling her.’

  Patrick leafed through the report. ‘Is it the same knife?’

  ‘Hmm. It’s impossible to say for certain, but it’s the same size.’

  Patrick flicked to the back page. ‘Whose case is it?’

  ‘One of your colleagues’,’ Hamlet said. ‘I called and left a message for him too, earlier today.’

  Patrick’s heart sank when he saw who it was: Winkler.

  Chapter 8

  Day 3 – Kai

  Hey, bae.’

  Silence, apart from the background sounds of OnTarget’s latest album on Spotify
shuffle.

  Kai tried again. ‘Hey, sexy. Wanna get pizza?’

  ‘Shut it, Kai, I’m busy.’

  ‘What’ya doing, babe?’

  From her bed, where she was lying on her stomach, tapping away at her laptop, Jade turned and pulled a face. ‘Duh! I’m rollerblading naked round the park.’

  ‘Are yer?’ Kai actually looked puzzled, as if he had somehow missed this. He noticed that she’d turned her Shawn Barrett duvet cover the wrong way up, so it looked like she was lying on top of him while he gave her head.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. No – what does it look like? I’m on the forums, aren’t I?’

  ‘Anything good?’

  Jade made a frustrated sort of noise. ‘I mean, look at this, I’m only being realistic and I’m getting a load of abuse!’

  Kai came and lay on top of Jade, grinding his pelvis into the small of her back as he looked over her shoulder at her screen.

  F-U-Cancer: I’m still totally cut up about MissTargetHeart.

  Jade had responded: You need to get over that, seriously. Not like you two were BFFs, FFS!

  F-U-Cancer: How can you be so heartless, Jade? I knew I shouldn’t have started talking to you again.

  ‘How can you be so heartless, Jade?’ mimicked Jade in a high-pitched, whiny voice. ‘God, she’s such a sap. Posh cow.’

  Kai fixed his gaze on one of the dozens of Shawn Barrett posters on Jade’s bedroom wall. ‘I’d be proper gutted if you got throttled.’

  Jade ignored him. A new message had made her stiffen with outrage. ‘WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK?’

  ‘Sup, bae?’ Kai tried to playfully straddle her on the bed so he could massage her tense shoulders, but she slapped him away as though he was a particularly irritating bluebottle.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered, scanning the computer screen. ‘She’s bang out of order. No, no. I ain’t having that, no way.’