‘You can’t what?’
‘This. Can’t do this. When I saw you…’ she swings her head round and aims her gaze in the direction of Argyle Street, ‘… and as I was kinda stalkin’ you,’ another smile, big in size but weakened by the worrying thoughts now going through her head. A cough. ‘… over there I was rehearsin’ all this stuff in my head. And now I can’t do it. You’re wanted for murder.’ The smile is gone now and it looks like it’s not coming back any time soon.
‘You think I’m a murderer?’ I push back into my seat and throw my hands to my sides, palms facing up. Then I curse myself. Why am I trying to win her back? Lose the woman, McBain, and fast.
‘No,’ she leans towards me her face full of contrition. Then when she notices my gaze fall from her face to the cleavage on display, she sits back and places a hand over her twin attractions until she is sure my eyes have returned to her face.
‘It’s just… a woman can’t be too careful. There are a lot of nutters around, you know.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘Of course you know, Mr Policeman,’ she smiles in a self-deprecating manner. ‘Just having a blonde moment.’ She leans forward to pick her handbag from the table, a voluminous pink thing that would have taken half a cow to make. As she does so my eyes are drawn back to her tits. And I am amazed at how easily I can be distracted. My way of life is in danger here and I behave like a teenager over a flash of pale soft skin.
‘I really should…’ She stands up.
I stay seated. ‘So what were you rehearsing as you were stalking me?’ I smile. Charm on at force ten. If she is suspicious of me I can’t let her leave until I know just how suspicious she really is. I can’t have her phoning any helpline or, God forbid, Crimestoppers. So I’ll act calm and collected while all I want to do is push her down into her seat and convince her of my innocence as forcefully as is legal and decent.
‘Stalkin’ is a bit strong.’ She flicks her hair and it occurs to me that she fancies me. Doh. Who is having the blonde moment now? She went to bed with you when you were a lot fatter and a lot less sober than you are now. Of course she fancies you.
‘So how would you put it?’ As I smile, I realise that some of the strain of the last few weeks has faded. Like some of the colour has leaked from an indelible stain on my soul. Maybe I fancy her just a little too. Theresa’s face superimposes itself on my mind and I give myself a lecture. Flirting isn’t fucking.
Maggie sits back down. Very slowly. Her knees bending as her nicely curved and ample backside gets nearer to the cloth of the chair while she gives in to the desire to stay and ignores the impulse to get on her mobile. She laughs and flicks her hair again.
‘Now, wouldn’t that be funny… I mean if you really were a murderer… and I was actually stalkin’…’ she stops talking and it is a few moments before I realise what is happening.
I look at her face and see that her eyes are aimed at my groin. I cross my legs noting a feeling of discomfort. You can take the boy out of the convent, but it seems that it is still difficult to work on the reverse. I’m surprised at how coy I am feeling.
‘It gets very tiring, very quickly, when men talk to my boobs.’ Maggie is thin-lipped. ‘How did you like it when I stared at your crotch?’
I uncross my legs defiantly but before I know it my hands are on my lap. ‘Not all men would be uncomfortable with a woman openly checking out their lunchbox.’ I smile my apology and change the subject. ‘So what were you rehearsing when you were on your way to talk to me?’
‘Oh. That.’ She busies herself in her handbag and, after what feels like several hours, resurfaces. ‘I can never find anything in this bloody thing.’ She rummages some more. Then she stops. ‘This is what they might call displacement activity.’ Smile. ‘The thing is, Ray, I can’t stop thinkin’ about you. Ever since that night…’
‘But nothing happened.’
‘True. But it’s not just that. I mean I do find you… but I want to help you. There’s a wee boy in there… in a lot of pain and I want to help him.’
‘Right. Now you are freaking me out.’ My turn to stand up.
‘I could just call Crimestoppers.’
Some tension uncorks and I sit down.
‘Any more of this and people will be lining up their chairs and turning the music off and on at irritating intervals. Musical chairs.’
‘Right. Anyway,’ I rub at my face suddenly exhausted, ‘just tell me what you want, Maggie, and then we can both go our separate ways.’
‘We didn’t just meet by chance, Ray.’ She leans forward and I keep my eyes tracked firmly on hers. No straying is allowed. ‘Somethin’ brought us together. Chance. Synchronicity. Whatever you would like to call it. But I am convinced that we were brought together so that I could help you.’
‘Help me? You’re saying that fate brought us together? So that you could help me?’ Cynicism sharpens my tone. ‘Next time I’m chatting up a woman I must remember to use that line.’
‘Are you still getting nightmares?’
She takes a deep breath and for the second time within minutes I realise there is more to this woman than curves and hair. ‘I know it sounds crazy, Ray. God knows I have trouble dealing with it at times, but I have a gift. I can help you. There is no such thing as coincidence, Ray. We were meant to meet. You needed help. I came into your life at just the right time.’
‘So fate not only decided that I needed your help, but that I needed a shag?’
‘If I remember rightly, the shag never happened.’ She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. ‘I was drawn to you, Ray. Physically and mentally. And why the fuck am I justifyin’ myself to you?’
‘Sorry.’ I feel awful now. ‘I didn’t mean…’
‘What did you mean?’ The lady isn’t for letting me off the hook.
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t getting at you. I just don’t buy into all that fate stuff. Or the psychic stuff.’
‘I’m not psychic. I’m intuitive. Psychic has too many… comes with a lot of baggage. Anyway, we met in a pub I didn’t know existed until that night. Just at a time when you needed someone’s help. Someone who is uniquely qualified to do so. What do you call that?’
‘Okay, okay. Can we discuss the whims of fate another time? I have a murderer to catch.’
Maggie’s energy deflates with a loud sigh. The “M” word was now on the table between us again.
‘What can I do to help you, Ray?’
‘Do your stuff and find out who the murderer is?’ Each word is laced with sarcasm.
‘It’s not as easy as that. And that’s not the best way to help you.’
‘Why not? You’d be in all the papers. You’d have your own TV programme.’ Fuck this. I’ve had enough. ‘If you really want to help me, do your psychic mumbo jumbo shit and find the murderer.’
‘Helping you would be getting you to take responsibility and stop feeling bloody sorry for yourself. Let’s review your life in the last few months. Drinking until you lose consciousness. Unable to eat properly because you keep being sick. Bad dreams. You’re going to lose it, Ray. And that’s without using my gift. You need to face the truth, Ray, as horrible as that may be. And the sooner you learn to accept things, the better.’
‘What about this murderer? You can’t see him?’ Accept what? I’m on my own conversational track and she’s on another one entirely. ‘Psychic, my arse.’ I turn away from her in disgust.
She reaches out and holds my hand on top of the table between us. If I turn to face her I know I’ll see a look of pity. And I don’t do pity.
‘You were just a boy, Ray. What happened to you was evil… evil.’
‘What are you…?’ I face her and the look on her face almost unmans me.
It’s all I can do to hold myself upright in the chair and keep an expression on my face that approximates neutral.
She knows. ‘He was an evil man, Ray. Don’t let your past poison your present. Deal with it.’
/> ‘How?’
She actually knows. And she doesn’t have to spell it out. It is all in her expression.
‘This is… unbelievable. This psychic shit. Nah. You don’t… how can you…?’
‘Why is it so unbelievable? Science doesn’t have all the answers. And anyway, why do we ridicule things that science can’t explain? Not everythin’ in life fits into a neat wee box, you know.’ Her hair is almost on end as she speaks, her palms facing out, fingers spread. ‘All of life is electricity. Your body is electricity. Each thought that enters your head is an electrical discharge. Why are people so dim as to think that the bones of your skull are enough to contain it?’
‘So your brain’s like a receiver? You’re tuning into electrical discharges? What a load of fucking baloney.’
‘It’s an explanation,’ Maggie shrugs. ‘No-one knows the full answer. But I know it exists. And now, so do you.’
‘Crap. Rubbish.’
‘Have you ever told anyone about what happened to you?’
‘Nothing happened to me. Nothing.’
‘Then why the nightmares? Why are you so linked to this case?’
Hands. I can feel hands all over me. They came in the dark. It’s only a dream. A lonely boy’s repeated night horror of a dream. And then there were more. Vague recollections of dreams of pillows and small hands. Pressing. Punching. All in a thick silence. Unable to breathe. Air like treacle in my lungs. White feathers falling in a snowstorm.
If all of this was dreams why does it all seem so real? And then there’s the recent ones with people. People with holes in them. Holes filling with blood. Wounds of the stigmata.
The people all wear Connelly’s face. And again those dreams are so real … the emotions, the smells, the pictures. The detail is remarkable. It’s like I’m there and I’m making him suffer. I’m killing Connelly over and over again.
Bottom line, McBain. And this is a thought that requires instant medication… then if I wasn’t abused, then I must be the bastard that’s killing all these people. These are not dreams.
They are memories.
Chapter 31
DI Ray McBain, Serial Killer. Try that one on for size. Does it fit?
My head is in my hands and I’m in a toilet cubicle at the Radisson. See me? See toilets? Getting to be a habit. Maggie will be outside wondering what the hell is going on. Do I have it in me to kill someone? Three someones?
So far.
Maybe I should just go back to those pricks at HQ and hand myself in; ask them to lock me up, cast the key in concrete and then throw it off the Kingston Bridge.
The sights, the sounds, the feelings. They are all so real. Then there’s the other stuff. Dreams. The blood. Maybe they should make sure the cell is in a lunatic asylum. But if you are aware of your insanity, does that not mean you are perfectly sane?
Am I capable of hurting another human in that manner? In any manner? In my career I have come to understand that if you rub your thumb across the psyche of any individual you’ll uncover the possibility of violence. Unwrap the shiny plastic put there by society and then all you need is motivation. Did I have the motivation? Sure, I had a shit childhood, don’t most people? Has something else happened that I’ve buried? Did Connelly do me as well? The nightmare man could just have been a figment of an imaginative young boy’s mind. I knew what was going on with other kids and worried that I would be next.
As for that level of violence, I didn’t have it in me. Did I?
There was only one occasion in my life when I lost it. At the seminary. Boy, did I lose it. I kicked seven kinds of shit out of that guy. If I hadn’t been pulled off him, I’d be kicking him still.
Mark Doyle and I joined the college on the same day. He had a similar early childhood to mine, his parents were experts at hurting each other. Drink, words and fists, whatever could do the most damage was called into action. When they tired of each other, they turned on the kids. As the eldest, Mark received special attention.
We were sixteen and filled each other’s shadows. Wherever you found one, you were sure to find the other. We liked the same music, the same books and the same sports.
We could talk all day and still find something new and interesting to say to each other as the small hand slid past midnight.
Sex was a problem we discussed with each other. We had to accept its absence from our lives for the rest of our lives and, as committed as we were to the priesthood, we could pray till our knees bled and still wake up in the morning with a monster hard-on.
Press-ups and sit-ups became our weapon against the sins of Repeated Masturbation. Rather than grip my dick and rub at it until I was comatose, I would jump out of bed and beat out fifty press-ups and fifty sit-ups. Over our morning porridge we would joke about how many were required that morning to reduce the blood flow to our groins.
The seminary was a different world from the convent, a wholly male world, and Mark’s presence made the transition more bearable. I was used to being miserable and barely noticed that this misery continued, but Mark being there helped.
One night I was having a dream. A young lady was trying to seduce me. She was Satan made into tantalising, inviting flesh. One hand held a breast high enough for her tongue to snake out and skim across the top of her nipple. The other was deep inside herself.
‘Just put it in for a second,’ she begged me. I took a step forward.
‘No.’ I took a step back and tried to shake off desire like a dog shakes heavy rain from its coat. I couldn’t do it. I was training to be a priest.
But she looked so beautiful.
A hand gripped my dick and began to massage it. My whole body tightened. Pleasure burst from my groin and splattered on my stomach. I became aware of a weight in the bed beside me and a voice whispered in my ear.
‘Sssh. Everyone will hear you.’
Mark’s hand was still on my cock. ‘I love you, Ray.’
I remember nothing more. Apparently it took five men to pull me off him. No-one could believe the strength I displayed that night. Or my viciousness.
When I think of it now a number of emotions struggle for attention. My face burns with shame that I should have reacted so, both in the extent of my violence… and my sexual response. Fists and jaw muscles clench at the thought that a friend should betray me in such a way.
He was the first real pal I ever remember having, the one bright spot in a series of personalities who had let me down. And he turns out to be just as bad as the rest of them.
Fear curdles my stomach, I completely lost control. However I justify it to myself, I lost it. What else am I capable of? There is something else that worries. A part of me was looking on at my reaction with a pleasure so intense it itched.
I had lost control and it was fucking wonderful.
Mark and I never spoke again. I left the seminary the next day and I have no idea what happened to him, or even the extent of his injuries.
Teenage confusion, misplaced attraction or something much deeper as far as Mark was concerned? I have no idea, but it left me with a stain. I blacked out then as I struck him. Am I doing the same thing now with these victims? I stand up and take the half step required to reach the cubicle door. Bang. I hit my head on it. Am I a murderer? Bang. Did I kill those people?
I sit down again. Okay, calm down. Count to ten. Eleven. Twelve. I am not a murderer. I am a policeman and I have a killer to catch.
Devlin. She’s my only link to him. I’ll go and see her and she’ll tell me where McCall is if I have to kick it out of her.
Maggie is waiting at the door, her face a study in anxiety.
‘You okay, Ray?’
‘Aye,’ I nod. ‘Aye.’
‘Thank God.’ Maggie holds a hand to her chest and grins, ‘I thought I was going to have to take you home and give you a good shag to calm you down.’ We both laugh. My laughter goes on beyond hers and tails into tears.
‘Let’s go back and have a seat,’ Maggie takes my hand as if
I was some distraught child.
‘You can do it, Ray.’ Maggie leans forward, her expression on full empathy, and pats my hand. She shoots back in her chair as if fired from a cannon. The chair rocks back on its rear legs and then rights itself.
‘Ray,’ Her hand is over her mouth. ‘Don’t go and visit that woman.’ She squeezes her eyes shut. ‘The woman with scrubbed hands.’
‘Oh. You can see her?’ But I need to. She’s the only link I have to her son.
‘If you need to speak to her, get someone else to go. You can’t. Promise me you won’t go.’ Her eyes are open now and large with fear.
‘What’s going to happen?’ Her intensity sets my teeth to Grind.
‘I don’t know. I only know it will be dangerous for you. Promise me you won’t go.’
‘Right. Okay, I promise.’ Christ, I’m tired of being so fucking serious all the time. ‘How about that shag now?’
It’s been a few days since I last went out for a run and I’m loving it. See the guy that invented this, I’m going to post him a fiver. Well, I would if I hadn’t already heard he died of a heart attack. How’s that for irony?
‘I am not a killer.’ The words run through my head. Each syllable matched with a shoe hitting the pavement. ‘I am not a killer.’
You know that moment, “the zone” they call it, when you feel as if you could run forever? It’s like meditation on a pair of fast legs. The tortoise becomes the hare. Pure fucking magic.
I run and there’s nothing but me, the drum of my feet and the flow of air in and out of my lungs. The rest of the world is only an obstacle to run past, through or up. I find myself aiming in the direction of the Necropolis. There’s something about the place that suits me, a monument to the dead set above and apart from the rest of the city.
Here and there glass glints among the pebbles on the path, here and there neon ink describes how Rab Luvs Maggie, just below where a grieving family has given testimony to the love they felt for the departed. Love in life and death. I get the feeling the dead don’t mind the intrusion from the living and near dead who visit this place in the dark. I imagine their energy dissipates through their speech and the various substances they inhale or inject, and falls like mist through the layers of earth and wood and bone, and feeds the dead.
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