by Mo Hayder
‘Call an ambulance.’
To Sally’s horror she saw his lips had gone blue. His hands were flailing, trying to grab her wrist. They kept slipping in the blood and losing their grip.
‘Get me back to the house.’
‘Keep still,’ she panted. ‘Keep still.’
He lay there for a moment, breathing hard, while she wrapped the jacket around his thigh. But even before she could tie it at the back she saw it was useless – the blood had soaked through the fabric, pushing through the herringbone stitch as if it was squeezing through a grid. And then that awful pulsing fountain of red again.
‘God God God.’ She glanced frantically up at the house. Jake? No – he was long gone. ‘What do I do? Tell me what to do now!’
‘I don’t know.’
She leaped up and grabbed her bag, tipped out the contents and snatched up her mobile. With shaking fingers she began to dial, but before she’d got to the second nine, David let out an odd whine. He half sat up – his mouth open in a grimace as if he wanted to bite her. He froze like that for a moment then fell back, jerking and spasming, as if an electric current was going through him. His legs kicked involuntarily, making him circle like a broken Catherine wheel. Then his back arched, his head twisted painfully, as if he was trying to look over his shoulder at the wheel of the car, and he went limp, lying on his back, one arm trapped under him, the other stretched out to the side.
There was silence. She stood, the phone forgotten in her hand, staring at him. He wasn’t breathing. Or moving. A smell of urine and blood rose up off him.
‘David?’ she whispered. ‘David?’
Silence.
Shaking, she fell to her knees in the spreading pool of blood, her heart beating like thunder. His eyes were open, his mouth too, as if he was shouting. It was like seeing a machine stopped in mid-action. She sat back on her heels. Numb. No, she thought. Christ, no. Not this on top of everything else.
The evening sun shone warm on the back of her head, and a sudden gust sent a swirl of blossom dancing past her gently, as though this was just another late-spring evening. Nothing unusual about it – nothing unusual about a small woman in her thirties killing a man, quite unabashedly, out in the open air.
37
It took all of Zoë’s reserves, that day of work. It took going into the sort of places she’d hoped for years she’d never have to see again. The club she’d worked at in the nineties was closed now – it had turned into a betting shop – but driving round the streets of Bristol that day, the list Holden had given her taped to the dashboard, the sheer misery of it came back to her like a slap. Nightclub after nightclub after nightclub, all across the city. Most of them were just opening in the afternoon, and from some the cleaners were coming out, dragging their heels, knowing their lot in life was to wash floors that had had every kind of bodily fluid spilled on them. The places smelt of bleach, stale perfume and stomach acid. The majority of the girls were East European. They were generally open and pleasant, unobstructive, but none of them had ever seen Lorne Wood, except on the front page of the newspapers. When Zoë mentioned there was a chance Lorne had wandered into topless modelling, maybe into the clubs, one or two of the girls had given her a look as if to say, was she nuts? Someone like Lorne ending up in a place like this?
By nine that evening, when she’d got to the end of the list, she was starting to think the girls were right, that Holden’s agency really was where Lorne’s trail had run cold. She was coming to the end of the day – the end of her promise to Lorne. Just one more knock and she’d admit defeat. Go home and watch TV. Go to a movie. Call one of the biker friends she sometimes met up with for a beer and sit in a bar planning her week’s bike ride.
Jacqui Sereno’s was the last name. She lived in Frome and had cropped up in a conversation with a bouncer at one of the clubs. Zoë drove the old Mondeo out there, both hands on the steering-wheel, her eyes fixed doggedly on the road. The address was a private house – and for a moment she thought she’d got the wrong place. But she checked the list and it was right. Apparently Jacqui operated a webcam service, letting out rooms, computer equipment and bandwidth, from this small, ordinary house, only distinguishable from all the others on the estate by its tattiness. The door of the gas meter hung open at an angle, broken on the hinges, and a dustbin overflowed on the front path. The windows hadn’t been cleaned in years. With a deep sigh, Zoë swung her legs out of the car and walked up the path.
The woman who opened the door was in her fifties, small, thin and bitter, with a dark suntan and an old-fashioned beehive she had decorated with plastic flowers. She wore tight black leggings, a T-shirt and red high-heeled mules. She was sucking at a cigarette, as if she needed the nicotine so much she’d like to swallow the thing whole.
‘Jacqui?’
‘Yeah? What?’
‘Police.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Have you got a few moments?’
‘S’pose.’
Jacqui kicked aside a fluffy pink draught-excluder and opened the door. Zoë stepped inside. It was hot – the central heating was on high although it was spring. She followed the woman into the kitchen at the back of the house. It was neater inside than out – there were lace curtains in the windows, with a mug tree, matching tea-towels, and biscuit tins piled in a pyramid on top of the fridge. The only thing out of place was a yellow and black sharps bin on the work-surface.
‘Insulin,’ Jacqui said. ‘I’m a diabetic.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Now, make yourself comfortable, pet, and I’ll put on the kettle because you’ll be here a while.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You’re going to sit here and threaten me, pet, and I’m going to come back at you over and again, explaining how I’m not running a brothel. How what I’m doing here is not illegal. How you have to define what the girls are doing as lewd or likely to cause offence. You’re police but you’re out of your depth.’ She smiled and plugged the kettle in. Threw a couple of teabags into mugs. ‘I mean no personal offence, pet, but since they’ve got rid of the specialized cops – the street-offences crew – I’ve been able to run rings around you CID muppets. Shame, I had a lot of friends in that team.’
Zoë didn’t want to get into the small print of the Sexual Offences Act. From her own experiences, she knew the earlier legislation – a lot of it was written in stone on her heart – but over the years her knowledge had slipped. A lot of the stuff relating to lap-dancing clubs was governed by local bylaws, and a huge Act had been passed in 2003 that overturned a lot of what she’d learned. The only part of the new Act she could quote for sure was the bit about assault by penetration with an object – and she only knew that from the discussions in the incident room over what Act they might charge Lorne’s killer under. She’d be no match for the hard-bitten Jacqui.
‘I’ve been over and over this. The point is that no sexual gratification actually takes place on the premises.’ She dug a wrinkled finger at the table. ‘I can promise you that. If there is any sexual gratification occurring it ain’t here. It’s happening in New York or Peru or bleeding Dunstable, for all I know.’
Zoë raised her chin and looked at the ceiling, imagining a warren of rooms up there. ‘How does it work?’
‘They’re “chat hostesses”. That’s all. Sitting in front of a web cam and “chatting” – or whatever they have a mind to do, if you get my drift. Catering to the more discerning gentleman who’s had his fill of the Asian girls. A little pricey, but you get what you pay for. Two dollars a minute. Not that I see a penny of it. Because this ain’t a brothel. My only comeback is the rental of the equipment and bandwidth with it. What they do ain’t my affair.’ She put a mug on the table. ‘There you are, pet. Drink up. You look like you need it.’
‘Are they up there now?’
‘Just one. Our big clients are South America and Japan.’ She looked at her watch. ‘South America’s in the office now, and do
esn’t like to get caught with his trousers round his ankles by the boss, and Japan? Well, he’s only just waking up. We won’t catch him at his randiest for another twelve hours. So?’ She gave Zoë a friendly smile. There was a smudge of red lipstick on her front teeth. ‘What section of the law do you want to argue about? You see, me,’ she held the hand with the smouldering cigarette against her chest, ‘I love a good debate. I should have been on Question Time, me. One day they’ll ask me.’
‘They will. They surely will.’ Zoë cleared her throat and reached, for the hundredth time, into her satchel. Pulled out the photos of Lorne. ‘Jacqui. Look, I’d love to have a debate. But I’m not here about the setup you’re operating.’
‘Operating? Be careful the vocabulary you use.’
‘The equipment you’re renting.’ She rubbed her forehead. She was hot and sticky in this shirt, and Jacqui’s tea tasted awful. She so, so wanted to go home – forget all this. ‘What I really want to know is if this girl ever passed across your radar screen.’
She spread the photos out. Jacqui took a long puff of the cigarette, pushed the smoke out of her mouth in a thin, straight stream, and squinted down at the photos, taking in every detail. She’d done this before, Zoë thought. Probably, if she’d been in the business a while, she’d done it a lot of times – speaking to the police about the victims of rape, abuse, domestic violence. Prostitution, lap-dancing, pole-dancing. Lying naked on a bed in front of a tiny video camera and a mic. All these things lived in a hinterland just on the other side of the law – sharing boundaries with the dangerous and the violent.
‘No.’ She sat back, closed her eyes and took another puff. ‘Never seen her.’
‘OK.’ Zoë put the wallet into the satchel and began to get up. She’d done what she could.
‘But …’ Jacqui said. ‘But wait …’
‘But?’
‘But I know who would like her. For his videos. He’s cornered the young totty market, hasn’t he? He likes them to look like teenagers.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘I don’t know his name. Not his real name. London Tarn they always called him. London Tarn.’
Zoë sank slowly back into her seat. ‘London Tarn?’
‘It’s London Town,’ Jacqui explained. ‘Just “Tarn” because of the accent. You know – like in EastEnders, but he—’ She broke off, squinting at Zoë suspiciously. ‘What? You look like someone just sucked the blood out of you. You’ve heard of him, have you?’
‘No.’ She clutched the satchel to her chest. Drew her knees together. ‘No. I’ve never heard of him.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘It’s just that for a minute there, when I said his name, you looked like—’
‘I’m sure.’ She started tapping her foot, suddenly irritable. She was awake now. Wide awake. ‘Tell me about him. London Tarn. He makes videos?’
Jacqui took another slug of smoke and eyed her. ‘Yeah – he’s been around years now, must be pushing sixty. When he started, he used to be just soft porn. Hi Eight. He used to run a club too – out in Bristol, one of your old-fashioned strip clubs – and when that closed down he put everything into the videos. He didn’t have any proper production equipment – the only time I went to his place it was just him in a flat in Fishponds, with one VHS here,’ she put a hand out, ‘and another here, and a bit of wire between them, and that’s how he’d copy them. Then he’d sell them in the markets. You know, the stalls at St Nicholas.’
‘And after that?’
‘After that he was a gonzo.’
‘A gonzo?’
‘Yeah. He’d make vids of himself. This was in the nineties, mind.’ She tapped her ash into the ashtray and crossed her legs – getting comfortable for this reminiscence. ‘I never knew him then, that was after my time, but I seen the movies. He’d be there in his glory with some poor girl he’d talked into doing whatever. Never bothered with lighting or anything, which I always thought wasn’t professional. A bit slack, if you want my way of looking at it. But they do say, don’t they, some people like it – the, you know, warts-’n’-all look. Either way up, it was a seller. And on the back of that he picked up pretty swift on the Internet deal. Give him his due, he was in there. And after that came the bukkake stuff.’
‘Bukkake?’
Jacqui laughed. ‘Doncha know what that is?’
‘No.’
‘It’s all about humiliating the woman. They say it was an old Japanese custom – what they’d to do to the womenfolk if they got caught putting it around. The men of the village would take them out and bury them up to their necks. Except instead of stoning …’ She broke off. Gave a nasty smile. ‘Nah, you’re the detective. You go and find out. But, anyway, it’s what he built his empire on. Bukkake, the nastier the better. I’ve seen some of it – looked like some sort of snuff movie, really dirty. Gritty. You’d think looking at it the girl was going to be butchered. Still, it sold by the shedload – just stacks of the stuff. Makes you wonder about human nature, don’t it?’
‘OK,’ Zoë said, very slowly, ‘what’s he doing now? Where is he?’
‘Oh, he’s mega. Mega-mega.’ She waved a hand in the air as if they were talking about a different universe. ‘Private jet, probably, servants. The works. He’s up there, now, sweetie, and there’s no taking him down.’
‘Which country?’
‘Here. In the UK.’
In the UK. Zoë cleared her throat. She’d just changed her mind about having a week off. ‘You mean, in this area?’
‘I think so, yes. And, believe me, if he set his eyes on a girl like that one on your photos he’d get dollar signs lighting up in his eyes. Why? What’s happened to her? Is she hurt?’
‘You don’t know his real name? Do you? London Tarn?’
Jacqui gave a low, guttural laugh. ‘No. If I knew his real name I’d be after him. For that tenner he borrowed off me in the nineties.’ She tapped another column of ash off her cigarette. ‘I mean, fifteen years. The interest he owes me, I could fly round the world. Go and say hi to my customers in South America, eh?’
38
The sun had already left the north-facing slopes outside Bath. The garden at Peppercorn Cottage would be in darkness. But the fields up at Lightpil House were slightly angled towards the sun and got more daytime. Another two or three minutes. The sun melted down over the hill, spread itself out, and then it was gone, leaving just a few flecks of grey cloud in the amber sky.
Sally couldn’t move David Goldrab’s body so she’d reversed her car to block the entrance to the parking area so it couldn’t be seen. Not that anyone ever came up here. Then she found a cardigan in the Ka, pulled it on and sat on the bonnet with her knees drawn up. She wondered what on earth to do. The muscles in David’s face had tightened, drawing his eyes wider and wider open, as if he was amazed by a rock that lay a few feet from his face. It was cold. She could hear everything around her, as if her ears were on stalks – the hedgerows, the fields, the faint shift of breeze in the grass, the dry rustle of a bird moving in the branches.
After a while she saw that the blood on her hands had dried. She did her best to flake some of it off with her nails. She cleaned off the phone, too, on the sleeves of her cardigan and dialled Isabelle’s number. ‘It’s me.’
‘Hey.’ A pause. ‘Sally? You OK?’
‘Yes. I mean – I’m …’ She used her fingers to press her lips together for a moment. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t sound it.’
‘I’m a bit … Issie, did you pick up Millie from school like you said?’
‘Yes – she’s fine.’
‘They haven’t gone out?’
‘No – they’re all watching TV. Why?’
‘Can she stay with you tonight?’
‘Of course. Sally? Is there anything I can do? You sound terrible.’
‘No. I’m fine. I’ll come and get her in the morning. And … Issie?’
‘Y
es?’
‘Thank you, Issie. For everything you are. And everything you do.’
‘Sally? Are you sure everything’s all right?’
‘I’m fine. I promise. Absolutely fine.’
She hung up. Her hands were trembling so much she had to put the phone down on the car bonnet to jab the next number into it. Steve answered after three rings and she snatched it up.
‘It’s me.’
‘Yes. I know.’
‘Something’s happened. We need to speak. You need to come to me.’
‘OK …’ he said cautiously. ‘Where are you?’
‘No. I can’t – I mean, I suppose I shouldn’t say on the phone.’
There was a pause while Steve seemed to think about this. Then he said, ‘OK. Don’t. Think carefully about every word. Are you near your place?’
‘Further.’
‘Further south? Further north?’
‘North. But not far.’
‘Then you’re …’ He trailed off. ‘Oh,’ he said dully. ‘Do you mean you’re at the house of someone we’ve spoken about recently?’
‘Yes. There’s a car-parking place. Take a right fork as you come to the house. Don’t go past the front, there are cameras. Steve, can you – can you hurry?’
She hung up. A sound – very distant in the evening air – of a car revving on the road to the racecourse. Then headlights coming through the tree-line. She lowered her head, cowering, even though it would come nowhere near Lightpil. It changed gear and continued up the hill. But she pressed her forehead against the cold windscreen, trying to disappear, trying to bring something peaceful into her head. Millie’s face, maybe.
It wouldn’t come. All that came was a bright zigzagging light, like the after-image of a firework.