Approaching Zero

by R. T Broughton

  It was only as he said these words that Kathy began to see the kind of character seeping through that she might have expected. She had encountered this before too many times through her work—the sheer lack of empathy, the classic stamp of the psychopath.

  “And you killed these children?”

  His face flushed with offence and he took a step towards Kathy. She jumped more than she would have liked, unable to hide how terrified she was.

  “Of course I didn’t kill them,” he said, looking as if he had a nasty taste in his mouth. “I could never kill a child. No, I just put it out there: carte blanche for Paedos. Funny huh! It’s that underground network chattering on and on again. Word gets out and soon I’m picking up bodies left, right and centre. I had three piled up together at one point. I couldn’t move for materials.”

  “Materials!”

  Joe took another step forward with his eyebrows raised and Kathy protested no further. She took a step back and realised just at that moment that she couldn’t smell him. This didn’t surprise her; it simply backed up his story. He was no paedophile, but his was a twisted and cruel kind of evil. She then quickly tried to focus her mind to pick up the thoughts running through his head and gain some kind of advantage, but predictably, all she found there was the daisy skull. It was now bright and vibrant, as if she had been working to a radar and had now hit gold. “And the daisy skull?” she asked.

  “Ah, that—would you like to sit down, Kathy? Can I get you a drink? I’ve got tea, coffee, nothing stronger, I’m afraid. I might have a few herbal teabags floating around.” The offer was all the more eerie because he meant it as a kindness.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Joe nodded and continued. “I’ve travelled widely. It was actually while in Indonesia that I stumbled on the idea for this exhibition. I also met a man who became my first buyer. We struck up quite a relationship and he put more buyers my way—all raging paedos of course, but wealthy paedos. The best kind. Anyway–”

  “So you’ve been doing this a while?”

  Thump! Kathy didn’t have time to block him or react. She barely saw him move before his fist was in her face and she was on the floor. The force was so ferocious and she fell so hard that there was no time to put her hands out to break her fall. The pain was immediate and never ending, as if she had been smashed in the face with a mallet. He may have looked like an average guy but there was nothing average about his strength and speed.

  “Please don’t interrupt, Kathy,” he told her calmly and then continued to tell his story as if nothing had happened while Kathy mopped at the blood exploding from her lip and pulled herself against the wall. “Yes, I’ve moved around quite a bit. It’s amazing how careless folk can be with their children and then what do they do? Just make more.” He was laughing now. “Anyway, back to the story. Because of the nature of my, let’s say, product, I was put in touch with Aadidev Bhat. He’s something else. Have you met him?”

  Kathy could barely focus on the words now let alone answer him.

  “Smells a bit like boiled cabbage, though, which is weird because I didn’t think Indians ate that kind of thing. I regret meeting him now, of course, because he’s brought the police to my door. Well, my runner would, had you spoken to him, he was always a weak string of piss. Anyway, I was able to make a bit of extra money on the side supplying him with odds and sods that I didn’t use in the sculptures. But when I met with him the second or third time he told me that a psychic would come looking for me. That’s you, Kathy.”

  Still no answer, so he shrugged and continued.

  “And he taught me the blocking technique, which, as you can see, I’ve been practicing.”

  “How… does it work?” Kathy managed to say.

  “Oh, I assumed you would know. It’s about projecting conflicting images—the daisy and the skull—life and death. The rest is a bit more complicated and took quite a bit of mastering, not to mention a potion from the man himself, which probably contained some of my bones. Funny huh! To be honest I thought it was all bollocks to begin with, but I’m an artist and there was great theatre to the whole thing. And then you showed up with Suri.”

  Despite the pain, Kathy tried to keep her face as still as possible to mask the way she felt at the mention of Suri’s name.

  “I’ve got a guy on his way to her right now, in case you were wondering. It’s amazing what people will do for money, and I’ve given this guy a pretty indecent set of instructions.”

  “You bastard! You hurt her and I swear–” but his fist was in her face again before she could finish her threat and she was thrown against the wall.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it,” he ruminated, but didn’t elaborate. And then he said, “Of course I’ll be miles away before they find all the bodies. It’s been fun though, hasn’t it?”

  Joe turned his back on Kathy, so confident was he of his safety, and idly leafed through the notes on his desk as she struggled to focus herself back in the room and remain upright. “I knew it was you when you went to the Spooner interview, but I thought you’d like the theatre of the ‘daisy killings,’” he smiled. “What a dick Spooner was; he would have ratted me right out if he had known anything, but I was too smart for that anyway. I didn’t work directly with the grunts you see. They plasticked up the scene and I came and took it all away while they went for a little stroll. Anything they did know was protected by the daisy skull—I hope you’re noting all this down for that little list of yours, or perhaps you’ll write a paper about it while you’re on your pretend sabbatical.

  “I actually have a young boy to pick up this evening—Heston somebody or other, but I don’t think I’ll make it over there. Do you know what the funny thing is? You know the paedo nonce that’s doing this one for me.”

  Kathy looked at him blankly, still nursing her face, but now at least her breathing was returning to normal.

  “Marcus someone or other. He’s doing your mum, isn’t he?”

  And then that flooding feeling was back again as if Kathy’s whole body was filling with a thick liquid that was killing her from the inside. Marcus? Fucking Marcus! How could she ever have believed that a depraved paedo could be tamed, that he could resist the filthy urges inside of him? She should have got rid of him when she had the chance or at least told her mum. Images of her mum filled her head. The poor woman: alone all these years and now she’s with a child murderer. She was suddenly so overcome by grief that the room had begun to spin; there was not a single part of her life that hadn’t been torn to shreds—her mother, Suri, Brady; everything was in pieces and she couldn’t breathe.

  “Let’s get you up,” she heard Joe say and he was now beside her, helping her into a chair and she was so completely overwhelmed by everything that she was letting him. She was urging her brain to kick back into gear, but she had zoned out. It’s the shock, she heard the kind police lady saying to her again. But now he was tying her hands to the chair and she only began to struggle when it was too late, when she was securely tied and completely vulnerable to his twisted vengeance.

  “That’s it, Kitty Cat, nice and easy,” he said and stroked her hair.

  “My G–”

  “Your grandmother, yes, she used to call you it didn’t she. I know lots about you, Kathy. In fact, I probably know everything, which reminds me. It’s time for the big reunion.” Joe shuffled over to the heavy curtain that Kathy had been unwilling to peep beyond and, in one fluid movement, he pulled it open, revealing the twisted scene beyond.

  “Brady!”

  There was blood and bones everywhere, surrounding a clear tank, the size of two bathtubs, full of an angry-looking, yellow substance.

  “Don’t look into it!” Joe giggled. “It will eat your eyeballs!” He then danced over to it and grabbed what looked like a child’s arm from the plastic-covered floor—a real, human arm that had just been lying there, congealing and rotting. He dipped the limb into the liquid and when he pulled it out it had been cleaned down t
o the bone. “Also one of Bhat’s,” he smiled. “You have no idea how hard it was to find a tank that it wouldn’t just eat its way through. It’s like acid on acid. Get it. Acid on acid?” As he laughed, Kathy couldn’t stop herself from shouting out to Brady who was tied to a chair above the terrifying mixture that all but licked hungrily at her feet. Masking tape had been secured over her mouth, but Joe had drawn a beaming smile on top of it so that she looked happy to be there. This contrasted grotesquely with the fact that she was barely conscious, her eyes drooped, one of them blown up, cut and bruised.

  “It’s all right, Brade, I’m going to get you out. I’m going to get us both out.”

  “He he he!” Joe’s hands were in Kathy’s hair, sweeping it this way and that. “Isn’t that what you said to her before? Seven years old!” he beamed.

  Kathy knew what was coming next—he knew everything—and as much as she desperately wanted to show him that she didn’t care, she couldn’t stop the tears forming in her eyes.

  “Aw! I didn’t mean to upset you, Kitty Cat. I know you don’t like to talk about it. But it might make you feel better to get it all out… while you still have the chance. What do you say? That’s what DCI Spazola thought wasn’t it, but he couldn’t even crack the surface. So tell me, what does make a thirty-two-year-old woman obsessed with paedophilessmelling them, hunting them, killing them? And what makes a thirty-two-year-old woman obsess about her best friend, making her run away all over the world to get away from her?”

  Kathy looked deep into Brady’s eyes and could see that they were also filling with tears, although she looked barely conscious enough to hear what was going on.

  “Could it be that poor little Kathy and poor little Brady were snatched when they were little? Could it be that the paedos got to you two and twisted you up so badly that you can’t move for the smell of perversion? Could it be–”

  “Stop it, you fuck! Just stop!”

  “Naughty Joe!” Joe told himself, smiling and leaning back against his desk again, still idly checking his papers as if he had far more pressing things to do that deal with the likes of them. And then he was animated again and had moved over to the tank. “None of that really matters now, does it? Anyway, I’ve got some good news for you and some not so good news. The good news is that you did really well. You took out a bunch of nonces and you would have done more. Well done you, both of you, and Suri too, whatever state she might be in.” His voice was now commanded, rehearsed even. He was the ringmaster of this spectacle and he was enjoying every minute of it. His body was pumped up and his smile was wide. “The bad news is that there’s a price to pay. And it’s a big one. Luckily for me I get to make art and money out of it. Everyone’s a winner. You see, I’ve been filming all of this—all of the materials being made in this tank. And now I get to film one more show—a live show this time. Someone is going to pay me millions to watch the downfall of the women who killed their paedo brothers. It’s beautiful.”

  “I’ll get us out of this, Brady!” Kathy repeated desperately, but then she was silenced by thick masking tape across her mouth also bearing the alarming smile. The pain of it against her torn lip was mesmerising. But she could only focus on trying to free herself. She pulled at the restraints holding her to the chair with a wild fire that she wished she had had minutes before when this mad man put her there. And she could see that Brady was stirring and doing the same, desperately trying to free herself, although she had no strength left. But it was no use. All they achieved was amusing Joe.

  “I’ll get us out of this,” he mocked. “I’ll look after you. Ha ha ha!” But the dry, mocking laughter at the end of the jibe was silenced far sooner than Joe had imagined as a mighty bang tore through the studio and echoed out through the tunnels. And for a moment there was no way of knowing what had happened, only that he had been struck still, turned to stone, his eyes fixed in front of him, lifeless, the camera he had been fiddling with rolling out of his hands and smashing at his feet. It was as if someone had switched him off and then a red bead began to grow in the middle of his forehead. A perfect shot. Kathy was inhaling and exhaling through her nose faster than her body could cope; her eyes were bulbous, bloodshot orbs as she watched his lifeless body crumble in on itself and drop to the floor. It was over. They were going to be okay. She couldn’t move for a moment, too scared to take her eyes off him in case he reanimated, but she eventually found the nerve to turn in the direction of the shooter and couldn’t quite believe her eyes. Her mother was standing in the doorway, the gun still trembling in her hand.

  “No, I’ll look after my girl this time,” she mouthed and burst into tears.

  Chapter 25

  Kathy and her mother were sitting in the Mini, Kathy in the front and Mum in the back, waiting outside a house not far from Kathy’s. It was another hot day and Kathy had to keep reminding herself to take breaths and not to get crabby over the heat. No one ever died from a little bit of sunshine.

  “Just be nice to him,” her mum pleaded and Kathy couldn’t help smiling, despite the obvious history.

  “I don’t know why you can’t just find a boyfriend your own age like everyone else,” she told her, but there was a smile behind the sentiment as she kept an eye on the blue front door and waited for him to surface.

  “Because you’re as old as the bloke you feel,” she sniggered. “You should get yourself a bit of it.”

  “Mum!”

  “But seriously, though, you’re doing okay aren’t you?”

  “I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore.”

  “We’re not, but the counselling’s going well and, well, everything’s settled down hasn’t it? No more list action?”

  “Yes, everything’s fine,” and again there was a softness to her voice.

  “I wouldn’t have to bombard you if I saw you more often.”

  “It’s work, Mum. You know how it is.” For the first time in a long time, Kathy wasn’t lying to her mum about work; she had taken a light support work job, working with people with learning disabilities, and the change of pace had changed her life.

  “Here he comes!” Mum shushed her. “Be nice!”

  “Today is supposed to be about celebrating Suri, Mum. Do you really have to bring him along?”

  “Just be nice!”

  The door opened and a tall, dark, handsome man folded himself into the back of the car.

  “This is my–” Kathy’s mum began, but he was sucking the face off her before she could finish the sentence. Kathy could see the vibrant glow of her cheeks even behind his massive head and couldn’t help smiling. The woman deserved to have anything in the world she wanted, even if it was this meathead.

  “I’ll just drive then, should I?”

  With no answer forthcoming, Kathy started the engine and rolled down the road. Although it was a short drive, memories of that night began to drift through her head. They were all the more prominent because of the occasion of the day and she couldn’t help but fill with sadness and that same question: would she have done anything differently if she could do it again? Who knew? But she wasn’t lying when she had told her mother that she was getting on with her life and doing well. That episode had shown her that death is closer than we all think and simply being alive is a privilege that she now took pains to appreciate every day.

  “We’re here!” she announced as she pulled up at the side of the road, hoping she was loud enough to rouse the lovers in the back.

  “Right, good!” her mother beamed and straightened herself out.

  Kathy was first out of the car, followed by her mother who mouthed, “What do you think?” about her new stud.

  Kathy didn’t quite know what to think, but gave her a lively thumbs up as the young man pulled himself out of the car. And then they were on the doorstep, ringing the bell. All was quiet to begin with and then the door creaked open and they were hit with lively Asian music.

  “Aisyah!” Kathy beamed and moved in to hug Suri’s mother; s
he still couldn’t quite get over how much she looked like her daughter, with black hair that seemed to glow and a natural, infectious warmth.

  “Kathy, it is so nice to see you. And Mrs. Smith. Please come in.”

  “It’s Carol,” Kathy’s mum told her for what was probably the tenth time since they had first met. “And this is my new boyfriend, Calum.”

  “Ooo! He is nice one,” Aisyah told her and stepped aside to welcome her guests into the house. Her English had improved over the years.

  The setup inside was befitting of the day; a buffet had been assembled with a mixture of Asian and British delights, the aroma of which was pungent in the air. Mustapha and Keajaiban were standing by it, engaged in animated conversation and a few other people had assembled in Suri’s honour. The music was upbeat without drowning out potential conversation and everyone was wearing brightly coloured outfits. Above it all was a sign spanning the whole length of the wall—Happy Seventeenth Birthday, Suri.

  “And here she is, the lady herself!” Kathy grinned and couldn’t help taking Suri in her arms as she entered the room and giving her a big cuddle. She hadn’t seen her for a few weeks and she was still surprised by how much she missed her when time passed like this. Although she wouldn’t want to go back to living with her, she was ecstatic that the whole family had moved so close and she tried to see her as often as possible.

  “Kathy, I am so pleased that you could come.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. How’s the course going?”

  “Very good. We are looking at the use of colour in Quentin Tarantino’s films for the nineties at the moment, Kathy. It is very interesting.”

  “I’m so pleased. I’m very proud of you.”