Dark Ink

by Gary Kemble

  ‘I can’t really believe this is happening,’ she said. ‘Can you?’ She pulled away from him slightly and sipped her drink.

  ‘Yes and no.’

  She watched him. Her eyes glittered from pools of darkness.

  ‘When I think about last year . . .’ Harry started.

  ‘Don’t even talk about last year.’

  ‘When I think about back then it seems impossible. Bec, what happened with Paul?’

  She pulled out of his grip entirely, but still held his hand. Fifteen stories below, traffic eased through the city. Someone shouted and someone else laughed. She leant on the railing.

  ‘It seems so obvious now,’ she said. ‘There was us. Together for years. And then not. It ended so suddenly. And I remember thinking, when it happened, that if it was that easy to break, then it would never have lasted anyway.’

  ‘Bec . . .’

  She held up a hand, quieting him. ‘And then . . . Paul was there, he was sweet. It was something new, exciting. It seemed so easy, after those last few months with you . . .’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ Harry smiled. Bec returned it.

  ‘And then he proposed and I was literally swept off my feet. He actually swept me off my feet. But then as the big date drew nearer, I started to get this feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t even really about you.’

  ‘Again, thanks.’

  ‘But it wasn’t, not then. I couldn’t see any way it would ever be right again between us. I just knew that I couldn’t be with Paul, either.’

  ‘You didn’t leave him at the altar – literally?’

  Bec thumped Harry on the arm. ‘No, almost. Couple of weeks out.’

  ‘Ouch. I wish I could say I was sorry for the guy, but . . .’ Harry put down his glass and moved in again, pressing himself against Bec, holding her. They kissed.

  The skies opened up, and big drops of icy rain splatted against the balcony. But Harry didn’t feel the cold anymore.

  CHAPTER 13

  Harry tried to block out the sound of his phone ringing. Beside him, Bec groaned and rolled over. He opened his eyes, squinting at the bright sunlight streaming through the curtains. He couldn’t see his phone.

  ‘Harry!’ Bec said, as though the sound was physically hurting her. Harry lurched out of bed, realising he was in his boxers. He didn’t remember getting undressed, but saw his clothes strewn across the floor. He picked up his pants and the phone fell out, hit the floor and slid under the bed. It stopped ringing. Started again. Bec pulled her pillow over her head.

  Harry got down on his hands and knees, and grabbed the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Phil? It’s Saturday.’

  ‘Crime doesn’t stop on weekends you know.’

  ‘You’re a pen pusher.’

  ‘Can we talk, or what?’ He sounded pissed off.

  Harry went out into the lounge and closed the bedroom door. The almost-empty vodka bottle sat on the coffee table, mocking him. He slumped on the couch and looked the other way.

  ‘Okay. Hit me. But gently.’

  ‘There was an . . . accident this morning,’ he said.

  ‘An accident? You paused.’

  ‘You need to see this.’

  ‘What? I need to see what?’

  ‘You need to get down here. Roma St.’

  Harry rubbed his face. ‘I had a bit of a rough night last night.’ Unbidden, his mind threw him a vision of he and Bec, entwined on the lounge he was sitting on. One of the shot glasses had rolled under the table.

  ‘I’ll send a car.’

  ‘Are you fucking shitting me?’

  ‘Harry, do I sound like I’m shitting you? Just tell me where you are.’

  ‘Don’t worry about sending a car. I’ll get a cab. I’ll see you soon.’

  Harry hung up and went into the bathroom. There was only one toothbrush. He checked the cupboard. There was a new one, green, soft. He broke it open and brushed his teeth. When he was done he slotted it in next to the other green one in the holder, and looked at them for a moment. He washed his face.

  Harry checked in on Bec. She still had the pillow over her head. He thought about kissing her goodbye but felt suddenly bashful. And he didn’t want to wake her.

  He found a notebook and pen in the kitchen.

  Dear Bec,

  Sorry – work calls.

  Thanks for last night. I have no idea what we got up to, but it looks like we had fun. My place next time, okay?

  H xx

  * * *

  Harry eased through the front doors of police HQ, clutching the takeaway coffee he’d picked up down the road. He felt like he needed a breath mint. The desk sergeant looked at him with an expression resting somewhere between boredom and hostility.

  ‘Harry Hendrick. Phil asked me to come.’

  The desk sergeant didn’t seem to register either name. He tapped away at his computer without acknowledging Harry at all.

  ‘Wait over there,’ he said eventually, pointing to a bench that ran along the wall. There was another guy waiting there, head in hands, faded jeans, flannelette shirt. He looked like he’d had a bad night too. Harry sat next to him. Flanno reeked of wine and tobacco. He paid Harry absolutely no mind.

  Harry pulled out his phone, surfed blindly through various social networks, something he did when he was bored or anxious. In this case he was a bit of both. He wondered what he did before he had a smartphone. But he knew – he would have been sitting there, one leg jiggling up and down, thinking of worst-case scenarios. He saw a picture of an Instagram friend posing with the DeLorean out of Back to the Future. He grinned, in spite of the thumping headache.

  ‘Harry?’

  Phil was staring at him. He had his iPad under one arm, as though he’d been carrying it around for the past couple of weeks. He looked tired. Harry pocketed his phone and shook Phil’s hand.

  ‘Follow me.’

  He handed Harry a pass with a big red T on it. Under that, his name, scrawled in ballpoint pen. Phil led the way through the front room to a door that looked like it had a bit of heft to it. There was a key-code panel next to it, and a security camera above it. Phil pressed the buttons and the door clicked open, then clunked shut behind them. Phil led him through the bowels of police headquarters.

  ‘Big night?’

  ‘Yeah. I caught up with Bec.’

  Phil stopped in his tracks. ‘As in?’

  ‘Yeah, that Bec.’

  Phil whistled. ‘So . . . back on again?’

  Harry nodded, although he couldn’t actually remember what happened the night before. ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  Phil opened an unmarked door and gestured for Harry to enter. It was a small office. Computer on a bench desk in front of a large mirror. The mirror looked too big for the room. There were a couple of metallic green filing cabinets. A clock on the wall. Another machine next to the computer, but Harry didn’t know what it was. Phil closed the door behind him.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ Harry said.

  Phil pulled out the chairs in front of the bench desk. Harry took one and Phil sat next to him, then laid the iPad between them. Harry’s stomach filled with butterflies. He wished he’d had something to eat. He pushed the cup to one side as Phil fired up the device.

  ‘We’ve had another . . . situation,’ he said.

  ‘Another suicide.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then?’

  Phil paused, then opened the photo album on the iPad. Harry found himself looking at a cherry picker. The gantry was extended. The hopper at the top was just under a set of powerlines. Harry stared at the picture.

  ‘What? What am I looking at?’ He was starting to get pissed off. Phil had dragged him all the way in here to look at a photo of a piece of machinery. He could have emailed it. Then Phil zoomed in.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  There was a body in the hopper. It was partially ob
scured by the railing, but Harry could see that it was crouched, arms curled over its head. And the overalls it had been wearing were burnt and black.

  ‘Happened this morning,’ Phil said. ‘It should have been routine repair work.’

  ‘So . . . it’s another suicide.’ Harry imagined the guy using the controls to push himself into the powerlines. The machine itself was probably insulated. But touching two of the powerlines would cause electricity to arc from one to the other.

  ‘No.’

  Phil’s phone buzzed. He reached for a switch. The lights dimmed. Harry realised he was staring into an interview room. A man and a woman faced the mirror. Judging by their clothes, Harry assumed they were detectives. There was a guy in a high-vis vest sitting slumped in the chair opposite the cops.

  ‘This guy killed him,’ Phil said.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Harry said. ‘I shouldn’t be seeing this. I shouldn’t be here for this.’ He got up to leave and Phil grabbed his arm a little more forcefully than necessary.

  ‘It’s cool,’ he said.

  No, it’s not.

  ‘He started yammering on about a goddess,’ Phil said. ‘You need to see this.’

  Harry let himself be guided back to the seat, partly because he felt this was part of what he signed up for, partly just because he wanted to hear what this guy had to say.

  The detective on the left had closely cropped blond hair, streaked with silver, and a broken nose. He reached for a button and the speakers on the desk crackled.

  ‘Recommencing interview at . . .’ he checked the clock on the wall, ‘eight fifty-seven a.m. Anthony Gillespie, being interviewed by Tom Dullemond and Sharon Evans.’

  Harry got out his phone and opened the notepad.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Phil said, ‘I’ll send you a transcript.’

  This is so wrong.

  ‘So, Mr Gillespie, can you just run us through what happened again?’ Dullemond said.

  ‘Jesus! I told the cops there and I told you guys twice. You want me to live it over and over again?’

  Dullemond and Evans just sat there, waiting.

  ‘The storm knocked out some powerlines. We were sent to repair them. Early this morning. Fuck, I dunno. Just after midnight. It all went well. Just routine stuff. We had the power off, fixed the lines, juice back on. And then . . .’

  He stopped. His shoulders shook. The sound of sobbing came through the speakers. Harry’s phone buzzed. He peered at the screen. Sandy. He switched his phone off.

  ‘I’d known him for years. I can’t believe he’s gone. We used to hang out together.’

  ‘Mr Gillespie. If you could just tell us what happened.’

  ‘I pushed him up into the powerlines. And he fucking burned.’

  ‘Why did you push him into the powerlines?’ Evans said. She had old-fashioned glasses and was younger than her colleague.

  Gillespie just sat there.

  ‘Mr Gillespie? What happened? Were you tired? Push the wrong button, something like that?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Can you tell us? For the benefit of the recording?’ Dullemond said, even though there was at least one camera Harry could see.

  ‘No. It wasn’t an accident.’

  Harry felt his stomach plummet. His fingertips tingled.

  ‘What then? He pissed you off? He try to fuck your wife? Your daughter?’

  Gillespie looked up at this, laughed bitterly. Shook his head, then remembered himself. ‘No. Nothing like that.’

  ‘What then? You just got sick of working with him? Just tick you off one too many times?’

  ‘No. He was great. Loved him. Like a brother.’

  ‘You fucking shitting me? You fried him alive, Gillespie. He was screaming and you just pushed him further into the wires, you sick prick. If it wasn’t for a passer-by dragging you away from the controls, he’d probably still be there, right?’ Dullemond looked as pissed off as everyone else about being woken early on a Saturday morning.

  Gillespie’s head dropped back to his chest.

  ‘Oi!’ Evans said, and Gillespie jerked. ‘Talking to you. We just want to understand why you killed him. That’s right, isn’t it, you’re basically saying you deliberately killed him?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Gillespie said, then coughed. ‘He had to die.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He had to die.’

  Dullemond slammed the table with his fist. ‘But why, you sick piece of shit?’

  Gillespie laughed, and for a moment Harry thought Dullemond was going to leap across the table and beat the shit out of him.

  ‘For the Goddess.’

  Harry felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

  ‘For the Goddess? What goddess?’

  ‘I knew I was going to kill him. It was so fucking good when it happened. When I pushed him into those powerlines . . .’ He paused and his back quivered again.

  Harry turned to Phil. ‘Get him to show us his back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ask them to get him to show them his back.’

  Phil reached for his phone and thumbed in the message. Moments later, Evans checked her phone. She looked past Gillespie to the two-way mirror. Raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Take your vest off, and your shirt,’ she said.

  It took Gillespie a few moments to register the order. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. Vest and shirt off. Need to make sure you haven’t been injured. Get evidence of any injuries you have, so we don’t get blamed for them.’

  Gillespie shrugged off his hi-vis vest, unbuttoned his shirt, and slipped it down his shoulders. He stood.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Phil said. ‘The marks.’

  Five incisions, invoking the inverted pentagram. They looked fresh. One of the incisions had split open leaving a trickle of dried blood down his back.

  ‘Except this one’s alive.’

  Gillespie turned around. Evans made a show of taking photos with her camera.

  ‘They need to ask him about the marks on his back.’

  But they didn’t need any prompting from Harry on that score. Gillespie barely had his shirt back on before they asked him.

  ‘What marks?’

  ‘You’ve got five cuts on your back, mate,’ Evans said. ‘See?’ She showed Gillespie the picture.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Dullemond snorted. ‘Someone’s been cutting up your back and you don’t remember?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Dullemond and Evans looked at him for a while, neither saying anything.

  ‘Okay, so you said you had to do this for the, what . . . the Goddess?’

  ‘No. I didn’t have to do it. I wanted to do it.’

  ‘Who is this goddess? Your mistress? Bit of action on the side?’

  Gillespie laughed again. The sound of it sent shivers down Harry’s back.

  ‘I want to know why this goddess wanted your workmate dead.’

  Gillespie sat there, chin on his chest again. His shoulders shook, and Harry thought he was crying again. But then he lifted his head and it was clear it was laughter. Dullemond’s face tightened.

  ‘I fail to see what’s funny about this. You killed a man this morning. You’ve admitted it was premeditated. You say you’re acting on behalf of someone called the Goddess. If you fail to cooperate with us, you’re looking at thirty years in jail. What, exactly, is funny about any of this?’

  Gillespie got himself under control. ‘You talk about thirty years as though that means anything.’

  Dullemond snorted again. ‘It means you’ll be just about claiming the pension when you get out. Your daughter, if she’s still talking to you, will be forty-five. Yeah, that’s right. If you can’t be bothered doing it for yourself, do it for your daughter, for your wife.’

  Gillespie said nothing.

  Harry thought again of the woman standing, partially clothed, backlit. He thought about telling Phil, but held it back. He didn’t want cops knocking on her
door, giving her the opportunity to slip the net. Harry wanted to catch her himself.

  Dullemond and Evans glared at Gillespie. Dullemond’s stare looked powerful enough to knock a hole through a brick wall. Harry was glad he wasn’t on the receiving end.

  ‘So you’ve got nothing else you want to add at this point? You did it on purpose, for some goddess, and you’re not sorry about it? Don’t suppose you want to tell us who this goddess is?’

  Gillespie smirked. Dullemond’s jaw muscles flexed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gillespie said.

  Dullemond got stiffly to his feet, looking like he was using all his energy to resist throttling Gillespie. Evans checked her watch.

  ‘Interview suspended at nine twenty-two a.m.’

  She followed Dullemond out of the interview room. The door closed. Gillespie’s head slumped. His shoulders shook, and this time Harry was pretty certain he was crying.

  Harry expected the two detectives to come into the room and swap notes, but they must have had better things to do.

  ‘What happens now?’ Harry said.

  ‘Psych test, most likely,’ Phil said. ‘Drugs too.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. He’s most definitely high on something.’ Phil picked up his iPad.

  ‘So that’s it?’

  ‘Unless you want to hang around for tea and cucumber sandwiches with Mr Gillespie here?’

  Harry looked through the two-way mirror. Gillespie was still crying. He had his head on the desk.

  ‘Nah. I think I’ll pass. Hey, can you send me everything you have on the victim?’

  Phil considered. ‘Yeah, I mean, we don’t have much at the moment, but when we do, I’ll send you what I can.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  * * *

  Harry walked down Roma St towards the city, turning on his phone. He saw the message from Sandy. Traffic was starting to build up, and he didn’t want to have to compete with that while he talked to her. He found a cafe and ordered a coffee he didn’t really want, then disappeared down the back.

  He dialled Sandy straight away, without bothering to listen to her message.

  ‘Sandy, it’s Harry.’

  ‘What. Happened.’ He could feel the strain in her voice. She was scared. He imagined her sitting at her dining room table, staring over a cup of cold tea at her beautifully maintained garden.