by Tom Pollock
The last wisps of doubt vanish from my mind like fog in a high wind.
“That’s her. That’s Bel.”
I slide down the wall next to Ingrid, feeling winded. There are thirteen dead.
Sis, that puts you in the top five most lethal British serial killers in history.
“I can’t believe it,” Ingrid says. “I mean, I’m trying but . . . I couldn’t believe it back at school, even when I saw it with my own eyes. Craig, Andy, Seamus, those guys were professionals and she was just . . . so fast.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“I can. Easily.”
She looks at me, aghast. “Why?”
“Because they were only professionals, because to them it was a job, but to Bel? Do you have any idea how much time we had as kids, with Dad gone and Mum at the lab all day? School for seven hours, sleep for another seven—that’s still ten hours a day, every day, that she could dedicate to this.” I pinch the bridge of my nose against sudden vertigo. “They say it takes ten thousand hours of study to master a skill. If Bel got interested in killing people around the same time I got interested in maths, she’d been done by the time she was ten. By now she’s a master four times over.”
It’s all in the numbers, Ingrid. I don’t have to tell you that. We’re silent for a long time.
“Pete,” Ingrid says at last.
“Yeah?”
“Going from hunting down domestic abusers to shivving her own mother, that’s quite the change-up.”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you think she did it?”
“I have no idea,” I reply. “But I think I know where to look.”
Under the roll of death, I add another name: Louise Blankman. Forty-two years old. I think of her lying in the makeshift hospital ward in 57 Headquarters. Is she still there, balanced between life and death like a coin on its edge? I hit Return and another tiny black cross appears on the plot. Suddenly, all those marks look like gravestones, a whole snowbound cemetery seen from a distance, and I have to look away for a moment.
Please, please don’t be dead, Mum.
“You okay, Pete?” Ingrid asks.
“Yeah.” I exhale hard and turn back to the screen. I uncurl my fist—my nails have left three little half-moons in my palm—and with a spread finger and thumb I indicate the gap between Bel’s last kill and her attack on Mum.
“Whatever changed Bel’s behaviour, it happened here,” I say. “In these eighteen weeks, and her pattern indicates she attacked one more person during that time. The cops haven’t found him yet . . .”
“So we have to.” Ingrid’s way ahead of me. She pulls the laptop over and her fingers fly over the keys. “I’ll pull every record for a domestic violence arrest without charge for the past five years.”
“What are we looking for?” I ask.
“Anything that jumps out.”
There are a crushing number of them. I remember Bel telling me that two women a week are murdered by their partners in the UK. When I first heard that statistic I couldn’t believe it, but reading through page after page of this . . .
“It is true,” Ingrid says shortly. “And it’s the worst thing in the world.”
I stare at her. “You mean you . . . ?”
“Not me, personally,” she says tersely. “But around a quarter of women get beat up on by their husbands and boyfriends at some point in their lives and I’ve spent seventeen years sponging up different people’s emotions, so do the maths, Pete. You always do.
“I mean, people do some awful shit to each other, I get that, but still . . .” She sighs and closes her eyes. “Feeling your nose and your ribs break and your eyes swell shut under the fists of the man who’s supposed to love you more than anyone else, then having to share a bed with him the same night because he fathered your kids and they still worship him. The threshold of every room feels like a trip wire in case he’s in it. Every left-out coffee cup, every unconsidered word feels like a trap in case it sets him off. Domestic violence,” she spits. “It makes it sound so fucking mundane, but that’s your home. That’s your life, your family. That’s supposed to be your safe place. Where can you go if that becomes a threat?”
I swallow hard, feeling sick and guilty. I’m spying on these women, peering through keyholes at the most intimate details of their lives, secrets they never meant for me to see. I look up and Ingrid’s watching me. Recognition is writ large in her face. Welcome to my world. I guess this must be how she feels all the time.
Reluctantly, I keep reading, but nothing jumps out at me. I speed up, wanting to get it over with. Name after name flickers by: James Smith, Robert Okowonga, Daniel Martinez, Jack Anderson, Dominic Rigby . . .
Wait.
Dominic Rigby.
That’s Ben’s dad’s name. I met him once when the school dragged him and Mum in to supervise a grudging and pointless hatchet-burying ceremony between Ben and Bel and me in Mrs. Fenchurch’s office. The truce lasted precisely until we crossed the threshold back into the school hallway.
I open up the report. On the eighteenth of November two years ago, officers were called to Rigby’s house in Camberwell at 10:45 in the evening by a neighbour who heard screaming and banging from the first floor. Upon arrival, the police found Rachel Rigby with bruising to her face and arms and—Jesus—a broken collarbone. There are photos in the file. I try not to look, but I can’t help but catch one out of the corner of my eye: a close-up of a wrist with yellow-purple-black bruises banding it like manacles.
The report said Dominic Rigby admitted manhandling his wife, but claimed he had been attempting to restrain her when she “had some kind of fit.” He claimed she had a history of mental instability, which they’d been trying to manage “inside the family.” Mrs. Rigby was unresponsive to questioning that night, but the following day corroborated her husband’s assessment, considered the matter private, and did not wish to press charges.
“Ingrid,” I say. My throat’s tight with anticipation and dread. “Find out everything you can about Dominic Jacob Rigby.”
“On it,” she says, no longer questioning. She doesn’t need to; she’s seen every thought flicker through my head. She takes the laptop back. A few minutes later she whistles.
“What?”
“Well, I know why there’s a gap in your sister’s little corpse collection.”
“Why?”
“Because Dominic Rigby’s still alive. Just.”
I don’t speak. I curl my toes inside my shoes and wait for her to tell me the rest.
“He was dumped outside Edinburgh Royal Infirmary with a broken femur, a depressed skull, a dislocated shoulder, a fractured cheek and eye socket, severe concussion, and four broken ribs, one of which punctured his lung. Burns on his chest and back.” She blanches. “It looks like she pulled a knife. He’s still alive, going in and out of consciousness. This is—Pete, this is fucking brutal. None of Bel’s other victims suffered this level of punishment; they didn’t even go down as homicides. I mean, she really went to town on this guy, like she didn’t care who knew.”
“When?”
Tell me the number, Ingrid. It’s the only thing I need to clinch it.
“Nine weeks ago yesterday.”
“Let’s go.”
Recursion: 2 Years,
6 months Ago
I had my headphones on, so I didn’t hear Bel the first ten times she knocked.
“How was the gig?” I asked when her face appeared around the door.
“Intense,” she replied. Her hair was plastered to her cheeks with sweat. “I’m still breathless.”
“Looks it.” I nodded towards her hand where it gripped the door. Four purple bruises swelled, one around each of her knuckles. “Someone get a little handsy in the pit, did they?”
She laughed. I smiled and briefly pitied the guy.
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“Well, I don’t know, sis,” I said. “You know what these Death Plague Rabbit Grenade fans are like when it comes to mosh etiquette.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and came in.
“Nice try,” she said.
“Okay, what were they called, then?”
“Neutron Funeral.”
“Damn. So close.”
“Death Plague Rabbit Grenade’s not bad, though,” she said. “If I ever start a band, I might use that.”
“Well, I look forward to telling some obscure Subreddit earnestly that I thought your early work was better.”
She dropped herself onto the corner of my bed, shaking her head in theatrical despair.
“Wrong again, Pete. That’s hipsters, not metalheads.”
“Curses—0 for 2. So you won’t grow enormous beards and wail into mikes about inflammation of your genitals?”
“Chin rings, I think, rather than beards. And strictly no definite articles. I won’t rule out the genital thing, though. Talking about dicks is good for business.”
“Fiery dicks?”
“Extra points for those.”
“You sellout!” I accused her. “Although you’re right: a beard wouldn’t suit you.”
“You’re only saying that ’cause you can’t grow one.”
“Guilty,” I admitted, and laughed, and she laughed too, and I heard it. That tension, stretched like a cheese wire across her throat.
“Thanks for letting me go, though, Pete. Seriously, I appreciate it. Mum would flip if she knew . . .”
She didn’t finish the sentence, and she didn’t need to. If she knew I’d left you alone. I felt my thumb go towards my forehead and pulled it back. Bel caught the gesture anyway. She tilted my head and examined the wound above my eye.
“That’s healing up nicely.” I caught the guilt in her voice. I touched the scab; it still felt fragile, like one too-rough touch could tear it away.
Mum had been called away to a last-minute conference. I’d overheard her instructions to Bel: Watch out for any signs of depression or stress.
Given that such signs included overeating, undereating, sleeping too much, sleeping too little, and general symptoms of anxiety—Mum had basically told her to look for one specific strand of dried grass in a haystack. A fact Bel understood well enough to sack the whole thing off for the night and skid around a beer-slicked dance floor to a band I’d never heard of.
Which was the only thing that was weird.
“Bel, seriously. I know we take the piss and all, but I have never heard of Neutron Funeral. You haven’t been holding out on me in the riffing department, have you? You know how much I like guitars that sound like buildings falling down.”
She blushed deeply. “I’d never heard of them before yesterday, either,” she confessed. “I went to meet someone.”
“Someone, as in a boy?”
She blushed even deeper, although she didn’t smile.
“Yeah, well,” she mumbled, “like I said, thanks.”
“No problem.” I shrugged. “You don’t have to watch me all the time, you know. As Frankenstein said to his monster, one of us should have a life.”
“Sure, it’s just . . .” She got up again and started pacing round the room, nearly head-butting Richard Feynman in the process. She was so damn twitchy, and it was putting me on edge. When you’re that close to somebody, their every little tic feels like an electric shock.
“It’s just what?”
She hesitated, then came out with it.
“She blames me.”
“Who?”
“Mum.”
“For what?” For a moment I didn’t get it, and then, “For me? For this?” I pointed at my forehead. “That’s ridiculous.” I felt a little needle of anxiety. My sister’s been saving my arse all our lives. More than anything, more than scorpions or Ben Rigby or drowning in open water, What I fear is her getting sick of it.
“No, Pete.” She hugs herself. “No, it isn’t. I should have been there.”
“I told her it was an accident.”
“She is apparently unconvinced.”
“Anyway, you were suspended at the time, remember?” My voice rose in alarm. “If you’d turned up on school property, they’d have booted you out for good, and how would that have helped?”
“Yeah, but . . . I promised her, and I promised you, that that wouldn’t happen. That I’d be careful, but I fucked up.”
She bit the edge of her cuticle, tearing it until beads of blood appeared. Bel was normally so cool. I’d never seen her like this before. It was freaking me out.
“You want to tell me how?” I hazarded. It wasn’t like Bel to be ashamed of her suspension, but maybe there was something she needed to get off her chest.
“Sure.” She nodded. “Sure,” she repeated. “Okay.” She ducked her head and pressed her palms together between her knees as she sat.
“It was biology. We were in the lab.”
“Ferris?” I asked, needling her along. I had no idea where she was going with this, but at least she was talking.
“Yep.”
“Ugh.”
Bel had Dr. Ferris for biology, a bullet I had mercifully dodged by squeaking into the higher set. He had a beard I swore he washed in the leftover chip fat from the canteen and he scratched his backside, but far more important than any of that, he was, without mitigation or restraint, an arsehole.
“We were doing the frog lesson.”
I groaned and fell back theatrically on the bed. This at least won a grin from Bel, but it vanished almost as soon as it appeared, like a brief glimpse of sun on a stormy day. Our school, being private, had the freedom to deviate from the national curriculum, and Dr. Ferris, the charmer, exploited this latitude to make his students cut up live frogs.
“Honestly,” I said. “You guys are really lucky he can fit that valuable lesson in between leech therapy and groping skulls to find their owners’ character flaws.”
“I know, right?” Bel said. “So anyway, we were in the science lab and the place stank of ammonia. I was feeling light-headed and I near as dammit puked into the white enamel basin in front of me.
“Then Ferris brought the frogs out. One each, no sharing. I looked down at mine, and I was shocked by how small it was—splayed out on its back. Its belly was a pale yellowy white, like candle tallow. It had been injected with some kind of paralytic. And if you really looked, you could see its tiny belly rising and falling with its breath.
“Ferris told us to be careful we didn’t puncture any vital organs. ‘We don’t want them to die on us before we’re good and ready.’ He actually said that. All around me, the others were busy digging in, cutting the skin open—folding it back, exposing the ribs, mopping away the blood.
“But I . . . I just . . . stopped.”
She paused to wipe a bead of sweat from her forehead.
“I had the scalpel in my hand, but I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that I thought it was too gross or anything, just too . . . sad.
“So I put up my hand. Ferris thinks I’m trouble.” A brief bark of laughter. “I guess he’s right, and he ignored me. So I came out from behind my bench and started walking towards him, slowly, one hand still raised, the other holding the scalpel. I remember that background burble you always get in class was gone, and I didn’t know when it had stopped.
“‘What is it, Miss Blankman?’ he said finally, and he kind of leaned on the Miss, and I swear to god he rolled his eyes.
“‘Sir,’ I said. I mean, I was polite as fuck. ‘They can’t feel anything, can they, sir?’
“He snapped at me. Said they were anaesthetized, of course they couldn’t feel anything. So I asked him how he knew. I mean, you read about people going under in surgery and not being able to move or speak, and when they come roun
d, they say they felt everything.”
“Anaesthesia awareness,” I interjected. Paralysed, but conscious, under the knife. It was my eighth-biggest fear in one hell of a crowded field. “Happens in 0.13 percent of cases.”
“Right,” Bel said. “But no one ever asks the poor frog after surgery if they could feel the knife going in. There is no after for them. So I asked Ferris, ‘How do you know they can’t feel anything?’ And as much as I hate that greasy prick, I wasn’t out to embarrass him. I really wanted him to have an answer, because there were two dozen frogs in that lab with their sternal skin folded back, and I didn’t want them to be in pain.
“He just stared at me for the longest moment, and I could feel my ears and the back of my neck heating up. And he just said, and I remember his exact words, he said, ‘Get out, then, little girl, if it bothers you. Stand in the corridor and let the rest of us get on with some real science.’
“And then I . . . sort of lost it.
“I could have walked out. I know I could have. I know I should have. Maybe then I wouldn’t have been suspended and you wouldn’t have . . .” She sighed, and shook her head. “All those dominoes, right? But I didn’t want to. And I knew, I just knew he wouldn’t have talked like that to any of the boys in the class. And what good would it have done? Two dozen frogs would get slowly sliced up anyway, and what if they could feel every motion of the knife inside them? I still had my scalpel, so I did the only thing I could think of.”
Her jaw locked and I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a grimace.
“I cut their throats.”
At this point, I felt I had to clarify. “The . . . frogs?”
She winced. “All of them. It was chaos, blood everywhere, the wood slippery with it. Jessica Henley and Tim Russov screaming, and I couldn’t help thinking they weren’t so squeamish when they were holding the knives. Ferris came after me, but I knew how to slip between the other students. I’m good at that. And I made sure. I put all two dozen frogs out of their misery. Quick, sure cuts. Most painless way to the exit, short of nitrogen asphyxiation.”
I didn’t ask how she knew that.
“My heart was slamming in my chest like a machine gun bucking,” she went on. “And I felt fierce and free and happy, and then it was over. Ferris was dragging me off to see Fenchurch. I only realised halfway there I was still holding the blade, which wouldn’t have looked good, so I dropped it in the bin as I passed. It was easy, slippery with all the frog blood, and it didn’t make a sound as it slid down the inside of the bag. Three hours later I was on a two-week suspension.”