by Lucy Cameron
‘Handcuff him.’ Quinn points his broken forefinger at the Constables.
‘What?’ The word’s out before Rhys can stop it. Quinn turns on him.
‘And what would you suggest, golden bollocks? That we let this circus continue until the quack arrives?’
‘I….’ Rhys doesn’t know. ‘He needs medical attention.’
‘He needs medical attention? Look at my fucking finger!’ Quinn’s face is creased with pain. ‘I said cuff him.’ The female Constable unclips her handcuffs. ‘Sit down.’
Andrews is still now. A calm acceptance or the calm before the storm? His cold stare doesn’t leave Rhys as he sits.
‘You.’ The male Constable turns. ‘Go and find out how long it’s going to be before this brain quack arrives. Last time I looked there wasn’t a section in my job description entitled “Look after mad ex-coppers in the cells until the station appointed shrink arrives and decides if they need to be locked up properly”. I could bloody well answer that right now and I haven’t got a million years of expensive training behind me.’
‘She should have been here about thirty minutes ago.’ The female Constable responds as the male Constable exits. Rhys steps into the vacated space. It’s like stepping into an oven.
‘She should have been here about three years ago, looking at the state of this.’ Quinn and the Constable laugh. A release. Rhys’s mouth doesn’t move a muscle. Behind them an icy voice cuts through the thick, warm air.
‘What on earth’s going on here?’ Everyone in the cell turns in unison. The woman that’s spoken is tiny, but her presence is overwhelming, pushing against them through the heat. She has a short brown bob and wears a stark white medical coat. If it’s for show, it works. Quinn stares down at her. ‘Doctor Flynn.’ She stares straight back. No handshake offered, no muscle on her face moving, bar the ones needed to talk. ‘May I have a word, Detective Inspector?’ Her eyes pulse momentarily. ‘In private.’ Quinn’s head drops a fraction as he exits. The smallest of movements but enough to register on the edge of Rhys’s vision. They step outside the room.
A new level of quiet fills the space. The female Constable seems to notice for the first time the blood that stains her uniform.
‘I know you, Detective Sergeant Rhys Morgan.’ Andrew’s voice is barely a whisper.
‘I don’t think so.’ Andrews smiles that thin-lipped smile.
‘Yes, I know you.’ Something tries and fails to force its way to the front of Rhys’s mind. ‘Let me tell you a story, Detective Sergeant.’ Rhys shakes his head.
‘Why would I want to hear anything you have to say?’ The female Constable shuffles uncomfortably.
‘Oh, please.’ Andrews laughs without humour. ‘Let me fill in some of the blanks from that little brown case file you were given. The one that didn’t even have the decency to mention me.’ Andrews pouts theatrically. Interesting. Outside, the corridor is silent.
Rhys sits on the brushed steel bench, careful to avoid the small pools of Andrews’s blood that sit like oil on the surface. The cold makes his muscles contract.
‘The file that doesn’t even have the decency to mention me and this was my case.’
‘It did mention you, actually.’ Andrews head turns at Rhys’s words. ‘It stated that after eight months of investigation, largely lead by you, the team are no nearer catching a serial killer the press have unimaginatively titled the ‘Couples Killer’ and you have been replaced.’
‘The file is wrong.’ Andrews’s words are hard. ‘I was so close to catching him.’ Andrews’s arms flex against his restraints. The female Constable takes a step towards Andrews, Rhys holds up a hand. ‘So close.’ Andrews laughs again. ‘So close and now you will have to start all over again.’ His eyes wander in thought. ‘He was right though, he was so right.’ Andrews’s eyes snap back to Rhys. Cold and hard and dark. ‘He told me you’d come. I’ve been expecting you.’
9.
‘Once upon a time in a far off land, there lived a girl. She was the most beautiful girl in all the land with thick brown hair and emerald green eyes. Then, one day, the big bad wolf came a knock knock knocking on her front door. Was it her beauty that attracted this ferocious beast? I doubt it, but it makes for a better story, don’t you think? Especially if the first victim is young. Young and fresh and beautiful.’ Rhys looks across at Andrews, lets his disdain pulse in his eyes.
Andrews tilts his head. Rhys feels like a specimen being inspected in a Petri dish. Andrews views him with contempt, like a Nobel Prize-winning cure a lab colleague has created. Rhys knows Andrews would release him on the world were he such a specimen, turn him into vapour. Rhys tilts his own head, a subtle mirror image. Andrews waits in silence then takes a small step back inside himself.
‘The real story starts eight months ago.’ Andrews is instantly serious, grounded. He shakes his head, tries to dispel the sudden look of disbelief that scurries across the sallow landscape of his face. ‘Has it really only been eight months? Is that all it has taken to get to this?’ Now his look to Rhys seems to ask a million questions. Rhys has no idea what the questions are. How many personalities are contained within what remains of this man’s body, morphing to the surface when they are needed. Or when they demand attention?
Rhys keeps his face blank. When she’s feeling kind, Anna tells Rhys he should take up playing poker, win enough for them to move to the sunshine and live happily ever after. When she’s feeling cruel she tells him he is uncommunicative and unemotional. She stamps her feet and shouts at his lack of words. Interprets it to be lack of love. He wants to tell her she can’t have it both ways. Andrews’s words pull Rhys’s thoughts away from Anna’s stamping foot and teeth clenched so tight the tendons in her neck stand to attention. Pulls his thoughts from Anna and her blood-red cardigan.
‘The real story starts two hundred and twenty-eight days ago, to be precise.’ The soft film of memory slides over Andrews’s eyes. Rhys can almost see his mind as it tunnels into the past. He’s glad not to have bumped into him on the way back from his thoughts of Anna.
‘My life was different then, not just because it existed, but because it still contained the naive purity and belief that this decay has taken away.’ Andrews signals around them with a jerk of his shoulders. The female Constable turns towards Andrews, arms raised ready. Andrews smiles.
‘Don’t worry, Constable, I promise I’m going to tell the rest of my story like a good little boy.’ Rhys glances at the Constable, catches her eye, nods. Her movement has caused tiny red flakes of dried blood to dance in the air. Where they will settle? Will he breathe them deep into his lungs as they waltz around the room?
‘I knew I was ready,’ Andrews continues, ‘ready for one last “Big case” and when her body was found, I knew this was it. Not many people can handle that, Rhys.’ Andrews meets his eye at the intimate use of his name. ‘One human being’s excitement, gain, at another one’s death. But I knew I could do one final, good thing. One good thing to help this beautiful girl with her sparkling green eyes.’
‘Excitement at catching the killer, surely?’ Rhys asks, even though he knows the answer. Andrews laughs, laughs the way people laugh at private jokes. He stops abruptly and shrugs.
‘So she was dead, my green-eyed girl. And she was so, so beautiful in death. I can hardly imagine what she must have been like in life.’ Pointless loss, no mirth. An emotion at odds with the man in front of Rhys now. Perhaps loss cancels loss in some strange way? Andrews has become a violent imprint of the man he used to be.
‘It was early, five a.m. or thereabouts, but I was already up. We hadn’t long had baby Victoria and I was doing the early morning feeds. How I loved the early mornings with my little princess.’ Andrews’s thin lips smile. ‘I came late to fatherhood, Rhys, but she was well worth the wait. It was nearly spring. The sunlight was weak and newborn, full of promise.’ The memory makes Andrews look almost human. It is the briefest second, a softening of the jagged edges.
‘
All this new life and smack in the middle of it was the dark hole of her death. It was her boyfriend who found her. He’d been out of town to visit family, not the kind of welcome home he was expecting.
‘The green-eyed girl’s body was still hanging when I arrived. She was naked, her smooth white skin given no decency, no respect. Her mouth was contorted into a twisted, frozen scream, the likes of which I had never seen before. Her face held terror that at the time I could not imagine. I was filled with a curiosity to discover what she had seen. Now…’
Andrews is silent for a long time.
‘I was filled with an overwhelming fear.’ A barked laugh. ‘I used to be ashamed to admit fear.’ More silence.
‘They say you can smell it, you know, fear. They’re right.’ The smell of rust and citrus plays at the edge of Rhys’s mind. Andrews’s eyes turn and bore into him, a burning sensation on his already hot skin. Rhys’s pupils dilate a fraction.
‘It is a smell that cuts through blood and death.
‘And there was plenty of blood at the scene. Plenty of blood.’ Andrews’s tone is almost whimsical now. Almost. ‘And yet not enough.’ The final words catch Rhys’s attention. One small eye movement, so small it’s barley noticeable. It’s enough to give away his interest. It happens before he can stop it.
‘Sight and smell are powerful things indeed, Rhys, but more than all of that, it’s the sound that stayed with me. The sound of her body as it was lowered onto the plastic sheeting. Like the crackling of wood on an open fire. Like fingertips gently touching the back of your neck.’ Andrews is lost once again in the past. Is he surrounded by the sound of crackling twigs? The scent of citrus thick in his nostrils. Rhys hopes this is the case. The furrow in Andrews’s brow could mean he’s wide of the mark.
‘I set up teams and we worked all day and late into the night combing every square inch of her home. We bagged up everything we found from last week’s newspapers to last night’s chip wrappers, but none of it related to anyone but this woman.
‘The main thing I remember about getting home that night was how cold I was. Chilled to the bone. My wife, Lilly, ran me a hot bath but it didn’t touch the chill that worked its way under my skin. Oh, how I cried that night. Cried like I had never cried before. Lilly held me safe in her arms. All I could think was no one had been there to hold my green-eyed girl, to keep her safe.
‘The following morning her parents arrived. I had to break the news to them. News that their daughter, Claudia Rose, was dead. A rose with the sap squeezed out of her. Have you ever had to do that, Rhys? Give someone that kind of news?’ Rhys almost nods. ‘Have you ever felt that kind of loss?’ Andrews holds his gaze for a moment too long.
‘So, the case file was wide open. A team of people pulled together. They all looked to me for leadership, for the right path to go down.
‘We had DNA, that wasn’t hers or her boyfriends, but no matches came up in the system. The same with fingerprints. She hadn’t been sexually violated which was a relief – until we were told she was alive when her blood was drained.
‘It didn’t take long to realise we were getting nowhere. Claudia Rose was as clean living and middle class as they come. No secret lovers, no secret addictions, no family disputes out of the ordinary for an eighteen-year-old. She had no connection to gangs, dealers or religious cults. No excessive debits, feuds or angry ex-lovers. Everyone genuinely liked Claudia, not just in the news soundbite way everyone loves the dead.
‘In my home-life, things weren’t bad. Lilly supported my enthusiasm and drive. My passionate belief that someone somewhere knew something, that there was a vital piece of evidence waiting to be found. There was of course, indeed still is, her missing blood. That has never been found. Now I know it never will be.
‘Baby Victoria became my sounding board. Please don’t think less of me for that, Rhys. I never told her the gruesome details. I always made the people involved farmyard animals. Lilly still felt it was inappropriate. I shall never forget the look she gave me when she caught me telling Victoria that daddy was going to catch the big bad wolf that had grabbed the chicken round the throat.’ Andrews pauses. ‘In hindsight she was probably right.
‘We knocked doors. We made appeals both in the papers and on television. No one had seen a thing. I still held onto the belief that the vital clue was out there, although it was getting smaller by the day.
‘The thing they don’t tell you about high-profile cases is the pressure. Pressure from the investigation, from the bosses, from the press. The press are everywhere, at every second. They hound the innocent and always expect answers within minutes when weeks wouldn’t be long enough. At first it was fun seeing myself in the paper, all hopes hung on me. Then it became tiresome. Tiresome for Lilly when all she wanted to do was buy groceries or play with Victoria in the park. Tiresome for me when I had no answers to give.
‘I never used to drink but I turned to whisky to try and dilute the image of Claudia that was burnt onto my brain. A whisky blanket to try and warm my chilled bones. I know.’ Andrews laughs. ‘Whisky, yet another cliché, especially for a copper. The world is full of them. I started to drink every night before bed, just to help me drift off. Then sometimes before dinner. Or just after lunch.’ Rhys can almost smell cheap malt on the air, on the exhale of Andrews’s breath.
‘It was the height of summer by then,’ Andrews continues, ‘and hotter than it had been for years. They were the kind of days where you volunteer to go to the supermarket to be near the freezers. Along with the reservoirs, our case was drying up. And then she came, like a mirage in the desert.
‘The second body. It was the same format so we knew instantly it was him. She was hung in the same way. Her face was twisted by the same terror. The blood was everywhere and yet there still was not enough. There was one massive difference this time and I clung to it like a limpet.
‘She didn’t die alone.
‘Crammed into the cupboard under the stairs was the body of her husband.’ Rhys blinks, sees the meaty thump of a body hitting carpet. The citrus sweat smell on the air. Blood flicked across wallpaper.
‘Was there any relevance in this seeming escalation to double murder, a clue? Had Claudia Rose’s boyfriend’s mundane family visit saved his life?’ Andrews shrugs, lets the question hang in the air.
‘The second woman to die was called Jess. Her daughter assumed she was working a double shift when she didn’t answer the door as planned. There was still no answer in the evening so the daughter used her emergency key to get in. That was when she noticed the blood on the internal door. The daughter had spent the afternoon cursing her mother for not calling to say she was working. I know the guilt and ‘what ifs’ still haunt her to this day. It would have made no difference had she let herself in that afternoon. Her parents were already dead.
‘I began to wonder if the person we were looking for was a ghost.
‘Killing three people or more makes you a serial killer and serial killers follow patterns, have some method in their madness. It should have been simple, what connected Claudia, our sweet youth, to a middle-aged factory worker named Jess and her husband Ron? Excluding of course the comparison in death. All obvious links were ruled out. Affairs? Prostitution? Had they met in an internet chat room? Had Claudia babysat for their grandkids? We looked down every avenue. We even went as far as looking into whether their lives could have led to them passing by chance on the street, or someone, somewhere seeing them in the same area of town. We drew blank after blank after blank.
‘There was a third pair of murders two months later, another couple, same pattern. The husband wasn’t the long-lost father of Claudia. Once again there were absolutely no links. Once again there wasn’t enough of the wife’s blood at the scene.
‘Night after night, I sat up with their photos spread around me like a rug. I examined every last detail, from body measurements to skin care. I read and reread the notes from door-to-door enquiries. I searched and searched for something I no
w know was not there. I fell asleep every night on the sofa, alone. For some reason Lilly didn’t want to hug me anymore. I smelt of death.’
Andrews stops. The silence is once more all around them. Rhys waits although he can guess how the story will end. Dirty and defeated in a cell beneath the ground. Andrews sniffs. Flexes his fingers behind his back.
‘The question that intrigued me the most, Rhys, was where was all the excess blood? It disappeared, as if it never existed. Three women had been bled to death. They were killed where we, I, found them. And yet even with all the loss, all the decay, there still wasn’t enough blood.
‘One night when my whisky bottle and I were up late watching television one of those old black and white movies came on. Dracula, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.’
Rhys feels his heart stop. He holds his breath.
Surely not?
‘That was when it hit me, Rhys, like a bolt of lightning. My moment of epiphany if you will. We are not looking for a human killer,’ Andrews leans towards Rhys, the tight muscles of his arms strain. ‘But a creature of the night. A demon from the very depths of hell.
‘A Nosferatu.’
10.
‘What the fuck?’ Rhys can’t stop the words. He’s misheard. The words are wrong. A grown man would not say that. A man in charge of hunting a serial killer. The female Constable’s mouth hangs open. She draws breath as if to speak, then silently looks to Rhys.
‘Nosferatu,’ repeats Andrews. Rhys feels the word razor sharp against his skin. Rhys blinks slowly.
‘I… ? What… ? Seriously?’
‘Your reaction is pretty similar to the one I was expecting. Please save us all the bother and keep the “have you lost your mind?” rant to yourself. That usually comes next. I’ve heard it plenty of times before.’
‘Have you lost your mind?’
Silence.
Rhys stands. Snaps his teeth together. Slowly shakes his head. Images of the victims’ families fight into his mind. Hands clinging onto hands so tight knuckles are white. Knees giving way, collapsing in each other’s arms. Internal battles and self-blame taken out on each other. They’re faceless but he has known enough of their kind of grief to see every crease of skin. And all that time this, this thing in front of him, was doing what? Filling them with false hope while he chased shadows? Time wasted. Allowing a killer free, to strike again and again and again. No wonder the team have found nothing under… this. They really have been chasing ghosts.