The Siren

by Alison Bruce

  ‘An estimate,’ Marks snapped. ‘Give me an estimate at least, anything to go on.’

  Call-Me-Bob flared his nostrils as he considered. ‘Eighty per cent.’

  ‘Eighty per cent which way?’

  ‘The wrong way.’

  It was Liz’s turn to scowl. ‘That’s far too high. How can a press conference pose such a level of risk?’

  ‘It might not, and remember it’s an estimate based only on the assumption that he will hear the broadcast. He might not. You have read my report, haven’t you, Liz?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, but sounded a little more uncertain. ‘Did I miss something?’

  Call-Me-Bob flipped it open. ‘Here, page eleven, paragraph three. ‘Although Stefan Golinski is not directly related to Riley Guyver, it is reasonable to assume that the close relationship between Rachel Golinski and both Kimberly and Riley Guyver would lead Stefan Golinski to view all of these people as his family, or at least as his extended family. In the instance of a severe psychotic episode, it is members of the sufferer’s family and extended family who are at greatest risk of violence.’

  ‘Well, I read that part,’ Liz replied.

  ‘And, if you read on, you’ll understand that Stefan Golinski and Riley Guyver are probably dead already.’

  ‘But we’re looking forward, focusing on the best chance of finding Riley alive.’ Liz was now addressing Bob in a slower voice, clearly feeling, like Marks, that they’d reached stalemate without knowing why.

  Call-Me-Bob looked equally pissed off. He placed his palms face-down, one on each knee, and stared at his hands, as if keeping an eye on them in case they decided to jump up and slap Marks and Liz for their blatant stupidity. ‘And if you read on, you will also see that there is a large window during which one of these episodes can extend. It is a period which can lead up to a violent conclusion.’

  Finally Marks was starting to see what Bob meant. Of course, he’d read the report, but it was littered with medical terms and footnotes referencing other cases. He didn’t query them, because he had been certain he had understood the gist of it. Now it was dawning on him that he must have missed one vital point.

  Call-Me-Bob continued, ‘If the murder of his wife, Rachel, was not his ultimate intention, then it is likely that killing Riley Guyver is an aim that he is still working towards. Your assumption that he removed the lad from the scene because he wasn’t expecting to find him there in the first place could be entirely misjudged. What if his plan is to exact some kind of revenge on Kimberly Guyver, and that could mean waiting until the eyes of the press are upon us all, then executing his plan in the most public and cruel way possible.’

  ‘So,’ Liz said, ‘when you said “violent conclusion”, you didn’t mean Rachel’s murder and the fire, but something that hasn’t even yet happened?’

  Bob clapped his hands together. ‘Yes,’ he crowed, with a Eureka! tone in his voice.

  As much as Marks felt he didn’t usually need things particularly spelt out, in this case he wished Call-Me-Bob had spoon-fed him this information an hour sooner.

  He could feel himself wanting to climb right up on the fence along with Bob and his mothballs. If he cancelled, they’d lose the potential for a sighting, but if he went ahead he’d risk giving Golinski the green light for his endgame.

  His mobile rang, and he glanced at the screen before answering. ‘What is it, Goodhew?’

  ‘Has the press conference started yet, sir?’

  ‘Do you think I would be on the phone to you while I’m speaking on national TV?’ he snapped.

  Marks listened as Goodhew began to gave him a brief summary of his interview with Jay Andrews. He didn’t even let him finish. ‘No, you can’t. She’s right here, so I’ll ask her myself.’ Goodhew began to speak again, but Marks cut him off. ‘If there’s something I think you need to know, I’ll be in touch.’

  Marks shut his phone, then switched it off. ‘No more interruptions. Everyone knows where I am.’

  Liz looked at him questioningly. ‘You said “she’s right here”, so was that message for me?’

  Marks shook his head, ‘No, it was DC Goodhew. He wants to interview Kimberly Guyver again, and I said “no”. But if he thought she was anywhere else but in the room with me, he’d have done it anyway.’

  ‘Something important?’

  ‘No, Jay Andrews suggested we speak to her again.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Nothing. Just to have a chat, apparently.’ Marks waved the subject away. ‘We’ll be debriefing her after the press conference. It can wait until then.’

  ‘So we’re going ahead?’

  ‘Yes.’ He jumped off the fence. ‘We’ve already missed the window for the evening papers, so go out and tell them three o’clock. We’ll use the extra time to tweak the wording. We must try our best to engage Stefan Golinski.’

  Call-Me-Bob nodded but didn’t look convinced.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The police had brought Kimberly to the Parkside Hotel with the expectation that the press conference would get under way almost immediately. She was impatient for it to begin, but initially not surprised that it had been held up by some hitch. She knew how officials were good at delays, having experienced them with everything from placing her with foster parents to the opening of the new central library.

  She had various PCs, DCs and other acronyms trailing around with her, but PC Kelly Wilkes had been her constant companion since PC Gully had gone from her side.

  The duty manager had shown them up to one of the second-floor guest suites. It had two double beds backing one wall, a dressing table on the opposite wall, and a table with chairs in the corner furthest from the door.

  Kimberly sat amid the pillows on the bed nearest the window. It gave her a view and a bit of personal space, since Wilkes was hardly going to climb on the bed with her.

  There’d been no sign of Goodhew either. When Kimberly mentioned the change in personnel, Wilkes merely looked vague and said she thought Goodhew and Gully had gone off to interview a witness ‘or something’. She said she couldn’t be sure because she’d stayed with Kimberly instead of attending the briefing.

  Kimberly guessed that PC Wilkes did know, but just wasn’t telling.

  Her minder seemed keen to keep the conversation going, though, and she mentioned Goodhew three more times after that. ‘He was promoted to DC in almost record time,’ she explained, then, ‘No one knows much about him,’ followed after several minutes by, ‘He’s really fit, though.’ Then Wilkes had grinned when she realized how it sounded. ‘I don’t mean like that,’ she added hastily.

  Oh, yes, you do, Kimberly thought.

  ‘Like this morning he chased some kid through Mill Road. Gully radioed it in, said Goodhew had shot off like a rocket. She was still in the car, and couldn’t catch him.’

  Maybe it was just a coincidence, unconnected to the case, but Kimberly felt a tightening in her throat and the room closing in. Had Wilkes planted that line just to test Kimberly’s response? Maybe it would seem unnatural to say nothing.

  ‘And did they catch him?’ she asked, hoping there was nothing in her voice but mild curiosity.

  ‘No idea.’ Wilkes smiled. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Please.’

  Kimberly watched the kettle boil. It was very slow and seemed to take ages before the first wisps of steam condensed on the mirror behind it.

  She wondered about the real reason for the delay in this press conference.

  As the glass became moister, Kimberly felt like she was watching all the tears she’d ever cried appearing from nowhere and weeping on her behalf. This time they weren’t for her, or Riley, Rachel or Jay – but for the new victim in all of this, Mikey.

  She didn’t need anyone to point out to her what it felt like to be fifteen and vulnerable. And, now being the cause of it made her guilty of one half of the same crime her mother had committed. But, unlike her mother, she wasn’t going to shirk the responsibility.

/>   It was 2.15 p.m. and she decided to give them until three o’clock to show progress with this press conference. If they were going to do it at all, then she was sure they’d want it on the afternoon news, and if they hadn’t done it by then she’d call Anita, persuade her to call Mikey and check that he was OK.

  Then she’d pull the plug on the whole thing.

  She switched on the TV and put it on mute, with the Teletext displaying the time. It showed the seconds, too, and she couldn’t believe how slowly they moved. She’d never been good at waiting, though she’d done enough of it in her time to qualify as a black belt.

  Patience is a virtue.

  Her mum had made her write it, over and over.

  The lesson hadn’t worked, and just the thought of those words brought back the unwanted sound of her mother’s voice. The sickly-sweet tone when she wanted something, and the razor edge it acquired whenever she had to ask twice.

  They’d had a clock in their front room. It was a fake carriage clock, with a glass dome and brass balls inside. It was quite heavy considering it was undoubtedly made of plastic. The balls were like the pendulum, twisting back and forth with the seconds.

  It ticked with a relentless ‘glop, glop, glop’.

  Patience is a virtue.

  Sometimes she’d been told to write it a hundred times.

  Seventeen characters.

  Twenty including spaces.

  Eleven different letters.

  All the vowels except O.

  She’d spelt it out in her head, one character per second, three times per minute. Over and over, until she lost count.

  And always that clock sounding more patient than she would ever be.

  And eventually her mum would appear from wherever; the shop or the bedroom or the kitchen. Wherever. She’d take the sheet of paper, run a critical eye down the words, lines, making sure they’d been written enough times. But for everything Kimberly did correctly, she slipped up in some other way.

  ‘Why are your letters tilting like that? It’s really not good enough. Only disturbed people tilt their letters back like that.’

  ‘Your handwriting’s a mess. You need to take pride in your work. Anyone looking at this would think you were retarded.’

  ‘Nasty people make tiny letters. Do you want people to think you’re a piece of shit?’

  Her mother would hold the pages up to the light and study them. ‘Not good enough.’ She would narrow her eyes and press her lips together in a critical line. ‘Not good enough.’ Kimberly would sit forever neat and straight and hopeful, feeling like the only time her mother paid her any attention was when she looked at those lines of writing. Kimberly wanted her to be pleased at the extra note she always added at the end: ‘ I love you mummy’ or something similar.

  But, more than anything, she wanted her mother to set the sheet of paper to one side and just be glad to see her daughter. Sometimes there were golden moments when her mum would nod approvingly and declare the writing was ‘getting better’, or say ‘you’re getting quicker at last’.

  More often that led to her asking for more lines the next time. Just enough to make her daughter fail in her task.

  And the little girl Kimberly wrote on, trying to be patient, trying to be good enough and quick enough to deserve whatever it was that shone as the unspoken prize at the end of it all.

  It took a long time for the little girl Kimberly to realize that, of all the men that had come and gone in their house over the years, the potential winners that had eventually revealed themselves as definite losers, there hadn’t been a single one of them who had been considered less important than she was. No wonder that, by fifteen, Kimberly had been feeling pretty damn vengeful. Not at her mum particularly, but at her stupid, gullible, younger self.

  Later she’d run away from Anita’s, tanked up with Vodka Ice, and banged on her mother’s door until it had been impossible for the woman to ignore it any more. It had opened by about three inches, and her mother’s face appeared in the gap. She didn’t make any attempt to remove the chain. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded.

  ‘I came to see you.’ Kimberly’s voice didn’t sound like her own.

  ‘I worked that out, love. What do you want?’

  Kimberly couldn’t answer it. Not coherently. So she started swearing, shouting until she knew her throat would be left feeling raw. Her mother was a beautiful woman, but so much for looks when she was fucking ugly in every other way.

  It was the utter frustration that had made Kimberly start to cry. She fished in her pocket and found a crumpled tissue. She used it to wipe her nose, then dried her eyes on the back of her hand.

  One tissue didn’t do it. She stood on the doorstep and asked for another.

  There were dreams, not the sleeping kind but the timeless, longing kind, where her mother held her. Cried with her.

  All Kimberly wanted was a tissue. She didn’t even ask to come in. All her mother said was ‘Fuck off before slamming the door.

  Kimberly waited to see whether the door would reopen. She still expected her mother to simmer down, grudgingly pass her a couple of Kleenex, and maybe say, ‘Go on, have your fucking tissue’, but in a slightly softer tone.

  The door remained shut.

  There was no room for denial, finally, and with terrible clarity she realized that the maternal bond was so nonexistent that it didn’t run to a single tissue.

  A tissue? Something you’d give a stranger without a second thought. Toilet paper would have done; a few squares of something that absolutely anyone could just take from a public toilet. Free. Gratis.

  Her distress had zero value. She had zero value.

  And how thick was she? All those years of being told she wasn’t good enough, and she’d only just grasped the message.

  From that moment she despised her young and stupid self.

  First she kicked at the front door but when that held firm, she pushed her way through the side gate and attacked the rear. She found a brick and bashed the crap out of one patio door.

  She ignored her mum’s screams of abuse.

  Little bitch.

  Fuck-up.

  Stupid ugly cow.

  None of it was new.

  Instead she went in and took the clock, still counting out the seconds with that smug ‘glop, glop, glop’, and smashed it on the hearth.

  The glass case cracked but it still ticked.

  Her mother grabbed at Kimberly’s sleeve. She shook her away, seeing nothing but the clock. She kicked and stamped on the fucking thing until its mechanism was reduced to shards of broken plastic.

  Then she kicked it some more.

  Her mother stood back, arms crossed, face set in a mask of sour disdain. Kimberly knew she never wanted to see her again.

  It took her a long time to walk home to Anita, and by the time she arrived she understood that her childhood had been unfair and unkind. Although she knew how wrong her mother had been, she never quite shook off the feeling that she wasn’t good enough, and began to fear what kind of parent she could ever be.

  It didn’t matter whether it was genes or upbringing that counted; either way she knew she should never risk motherhood.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jay Andrews had lost more than his life. He frequently thought he’d be better off dead, which made what he had left a minus life.

  He didn’t even have the ability to scratch an itch or look around a room. However the nurses propped him dictated what he could see, which was why his bed was positioned to jut out from the corner, rather than the conventional way with the bedhead against the wall. In theory no one could approach him without being seen, unless they chose a weird route, like sliding under the bed. What might be lurking under the bed had bugged him for some time. Then there had been other days when not seeing the ceiling had disturbed him. A few times, in the early days, he’d been left in a position where he couldn’t even see his own hands. He had feeling in his whole body but, without being able to make any
movement, he’d started to torment himself with the idea that they were just phantom sensations, that his arms and legs had gone.

  He tried philosophy and meditation but had come to the conclusion that there was no hell like being locked away with only yourself for company.

  No wonder they called it Monte Cristo Syndrome. Except, unlike the Count, Jay knew he’d never have the luxury of hearing his own voice, of speaking thoughtlessly or being chided for a tone that was too flippant or sarcastic.

  Eventually he accepted that he needed to trust what he couldn’t see.

  Each time Kimberly left his bedside, he believed she would return.

  From time to time she played him a video they’d once made on a trip to London. They’d spent the weekend in a cheap hotel on the Euston Road, and filmed each other on the upper deck of an open-topped sight-seeing bus.

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her that his recorded voice didn’t sound the way he remembered it. He guessed she knew. She knew many things without being told.

  He shut his eyes. In his condition it represented the peak of activity.

  She wasn’t the only one; he himself knew things without having to be told. He knew that Kimberly loved him, less than she loved Riley but more than she loved just about anybody else. He knew she would help him die if he ever wanted it. He corrected himself: if he ever asked her. He frequently wished it, but was held back by the suspicion that he still had a purpose, and to thwart that purpose would tip the order of things in a way that produced more repercussions than he could foresee.

  He knew that Kimberly blamed herself.

  But that wasn’t why she visited; their friendship was genuine, and he chose not to think of her with other men. In his more analytical moments he knew the pair of them had no conventional future, and he hoped there would be someone else for her one day. But if he let his thoughts run too freely he’d find himself imagining the moment when she’d break the news to him. The thought of it filled him with dread.

  Fear was his constant enemy. When it flared, it sucked him into dark places, leaving him to roam in the maze of tunnels running through the coldest recesses of his mind. He would lie awake for hours, pinioned by night terrors and loneliness. It would continue for several nights, or sometimes several weeks, a relentless 24/7 torture.