by Mark Roberts
Silence.
‘Are you there, Jack?’
‘Stick with him then. I hope you’ll both be very happy.’
He closed the call down and sprinted up the path towards Sefton Park.
71
00.50 am
Carmel stood over Raymond as he rinsed his hands under the hot tap in the kitchen.
‘Why have you got blood on your hands, Raymond?’
‘When Jasmine... when I dropped the lead... and... she ran away, I ran... after her, fell over like, cut my hands on the gravel...’
Carmel squeezed washing-up liquid over the backs of his hands and said, ‘Rub them together, do the backs of your hands and in between your fingers.’
‘He’s going to fucking kill me!’ said Raymond. As the last sound left his lips, a stream of green vomit left his mouth and covered the bottom of the sink.
‘Jesus, that stinks. What have you been drinking?’
‘He’s going... to kill me!’
‘Yes, if anything’s happened to Jasmine, he’ll kill you. Why did you take her out in the first place, you bloody idiot?’
‘She was being nasty to me, Mum.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Really nasty. Looking at me like she was going to attack me. I thought, if I feed her and take her for a walk she might get more friendly towards me.’
Carmel shook her head and thought out loud. ‘Yes, but where can I hide you? Who’ll have you? You’ve alienated everyone I know.’
She paced up and down the small kitchen, imagining the front door opening and Jack coming into the kitchen. She turned off the tap and, inspecting the palms of Raymond’s hands, saw no grazing or cuts. She moved the tap left, right and back again to rinse the fetid vomit down the plughole.
Raymond sat on the floor with his head in his hands.
‘Tell me the truth, Raymond. What did you do to Jasmine?’
‘I took her to Sefton Park and she ran away.’
Carmel slapped him hard on the top of his head.
‘What was that for?’
‘For not taking your medication and stopping going to therapy. For buying and selling drugs and taking drugs and thieving from people and for all kinds of other reasons...’
The doorbell rang and Raymond scrambled to his feet.
‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m fucking dead!’
‘That won’t be him. He’s looking for Jasmine in Sefton Park, and... he’s got a key.’
‘Don’t answer it, Mum. Please.’
The doorbell sounded again and this time the caller kept their finger on the bell. Raymond looked in the direction of the sound and started crying.
‘My head’s going to explode! Stop ringing the bell!’ Raymond held onto the sides of his skull, digging into the skin and bone with the tips of his tensed fingers and bitten nails.
‘I need to see who it is!’ said Carmel, walking to the kitchen door.
‘No!’
‘Shut up!’
As he watched his mother leave the kitchen, Raymond felt a weight pressing down on his head, a weight that sapped him of any strength and pushed him down onto the ground. Instead of the tiles of the kitchen floor, he felt a softness and a warmth beneath his bottom, as he heard his mother open the front door.
The ringing of the doorbell stopped. He heard voices, his mother and another woman, and he felt colossal relief. A man’s voice filtered to the kitchen, and it spiked his nerves for a moment, but it wasn’t Jack.
As the front door closed and the voices came closer, Raymond wished with all his might that he was invisible and as light as helium so that he could float up to the ceiling and be unseen by whoever was in the house.
His mother came into the kitchen first, and then a smart-looking woman with a man.
‘It’s the police, Raymond.’
‘Raymond Dare?’ said the woman walking towards him, holding out a warrant card. ‘My name is Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay, and I’m going to take you in to Trinity Road Police Station in relation to a serious criminal offence.’
The man came to Raymond and gave him a colour picture, blurred shapes that swam before his eyes. He put the picture on his lap and wiped his eyes, blinking to try to get a little focus. Looking at the image closely, he wondered if he were dreaming.
‘Do you know her, Raymond?’ asked DCI Clay.
It was a CCTV picture of Dominika blowing a kiss to the camera.
‘Her name’s Dominika Zima,’ said Clay. ‘You appear to be in a relationship with her.’
‘What?’ said Carmel, astonished.
‘Who is she to you, Raymond?’ asked Clay.
‘She... kind of... well, no, she, she’s my girlfriend. I guess.’
The man took the picture away and showed Raymond a second picture of Dominika getting into a white Fiat Uno outside Gino’s Bar. He blinked into focus.
‘Who’s the driver, Raymond? Who’s picking her up?’
He looked at his mother, who raised her hands in mystified horror at the CCTV image that Stone showed her.
‘She’s old enough to be your bloody mother. What the bloody hell’s going on here, lad?’
‘Come on, Raymond,’ said Clay. ‘Who’s the driver?’
‘No, I’m not answering any more questions. Are you arresting me? I want a solicitor.’
‘We can sort that out for you when we get you down to Trinity Road Police Station,’ said Clay. She looked down at Raymond, cowering in a dog’s basket.
‘I know my rights,’ said Raymond, feeling a dark heat in his bowels.
As Raymond got to his feet, he looked at his mother and she said, ‘You’ve just got lucky.’ He looked at her as if she was insane. ‘You’re much better off in police custody than you are here.’
‘Carmel, we’ve just applied to the duty magistrate for a warrant to search your house. That search will begin shortly. Your son is still a minor...’
‘I’ve got another son. He needs me.’
‘You look distraught, Carmel, torn in two,’ said Clay with sympathy from one mother to another.
‘Jesus, what a horrible night,’ said Carmel, her eyes filling with bitter tears. ‘I’ll accompany Raymond to the police station. What’s he done now?’
*
Raymond and his mother sat in silence in the back of Clay’s car. As she fired up the ignition, Clay said, ‘It’s impossible to unlock from the inside. So if we pull up at any red lights, don’t even think about doing anything stupid.’
‘He won’t,’ said Carmel.
Raymond looked out of the window and appeared, to Clay’s eyes, as she watched him through the rear-view mirror, to be sinking into a world of his own.
As she turned right onto Park Road, he muttered, ‘OK... OK...’
A group of young men walked the pavement, hoods up and hands buried against the cold, trailed by two stragglers at the back.
‘OK. OK, what?’ asked Carmel.
‘Just thinking... out loud...’
‘Save all your thinking out loud for when we get to Trinity Road, Raymond.’
He breathed on the window and drew three circles in the mist. Carmel leaned over him and, as she wiped the window clean, said, ‘Have some respect for DCI Clay and her property.’
‘I will, I will, trust me, I will...’ said Raymond, staring out at Park Road as the lads on the street sank into the ever-deepening past. And he slumped back on the seat like a man who had just run a marathon.
72
00.50 am
As he followed the curves of the lake, Jack Dare got further away from the streetlights at the entrance to Sefton Park. To his left the park was dense with trees and deep shadows that blocked out all illumination.
‘Jasmine! Jasmine! Jasmine!’ He had long lost count of the number of times he had called her name, but there was no response.
Jack felt sick and tearful in huge and equal measure.
‘Carmel! Where are you, Carmel?’ He looked at his iPhone. ‘You can’t be both
ered to ring me but you’re probably giving tea and sympathy to that other son of yours.’ In anger, he switched it off and put it in his pocket.
The wind picked up and he tried to make out a dog barking somewhere in the woods, but all he heard was the thin misery of the wind dipping and raking the long grass.
He felt a surge of rage towards Raymond as he called, ‘Jasmine!’ He punched the palm of his left hand with his bunched right fist and he pictured Raymond picking his broken teeth from the tarmac.
Behind him, the wind carried the sound of a dog barking. His heart rose and fell back down because it wasn’t Jasmine, and he had the sense that tonight God was mocking him, laughing in his face.
He thought about the story of Job, the one he’d read in the Bible Lucy had given him when he was in jail and wondered if God and Satan were having another wager at my expense this time? God, I am not going to curse you, but please, please, please let me find Jasmine, safe and well.
His capacity to pray fully spent and the cold eating his bones, he picked up his pace into a trot, calling her name, over and over, wondering if he’d ever see her again and thinking that if she was walking the streets or wandering in the dark in the huge park, someone would find her, an expensive pedigree dog, and take her back to their house and keep her.
‘You absolute idiot!’ he said to himself. ‘You should have got her tagged!’ And his self-reproach was followed by the bite of bitter reality. He simply couldn’t afford it.
He was silenced by something small and fast flying towards him, its wing brushing his scalp and sending a shiver through him. Another bat came, and another, squeaking as they swept over his head.
Jack made out a natural cave fifty metres away on his side of the lake.
He slowed down, the ground on this side of the lake icier than the wooded side, snow and ice crunching beneath his trainers, the whiteness of the ground picked out by the streetlights from Sefton Park Drive.
‘Jasmine?’ he called. ‘Jasmine! Jasmine...’
It looked like a cherry, the dot of red on the ice in front of him, then a bowl of cherries. He bent forward and put his index finger in the redness, explored his fingertip in the second-hand streetlights. He rubbed his thumb on his index finger and the colour came off on his thumb.
Jack smelled his finger and thumb and he knew it was blood.
His pulse raced as he saw a trail of darkness in the snow and ice along the curving path, and felt like the breath had been sucked out of his body. His scalp came alive, as if one of the bats had settled on his hair and was rubbing its claws against his head.
The trail of blood grew wider as he came closer to the cave’s entrance.
‘Oh no? No, no, no...’
The blood stopped on the path as the trail disappeared into the darkness of the cave. He looked into the entrance and saw a void that could never be filled, the void that was growing inside him across his whole being, a Jack Dare-shaped void that was masked by his skin, hair and nails.
He got down on his knees and crawled into the darkness, his hands following the sticky wet surface of the cave’s floor.
When he touched something solid, he stopped, no longer touching the wetness of blood; his fingers now were on a soft, smooth surface.
‘Jasmine,’ he whispered, stroking her flank in the darkness. His fingers rose towards her collarbone and he felt tears falling on the back of his hands. ‘Oh, Jasmine?’
He reached her throat and stopped when he touched a gaping wound that separated fur and the muscle beneath. He ran his fingers along the wound and knew that she had been cut from ear to ear.
Tenderly, Jack placed his hands under Jasmine’s body and lifted her from the blighted ground and said, ‘OK, OK, OK,’ because the silence around him was dismal.
He shuffled backwards on his knees holding Jasmine close to his body and weeping as he emerged from the cave. Closing his eyes, unable to look, he got to his feet, with the last of Jasmine’s warmth fading off into nothing.
‘I’ve got to look at you, Jasmine. It’s the least I can do. I’m so, so sorry.’
He opened his eyes and her face was the one he saw when she was sleeping, but beneath her ears there was a wide wound, and her body was limp and without life.
Jack Dare held Jasmine tightly in his arms, looked up to the sky and howled at God in his heaven and cursed Lucy Bell for fooling him into believing that God was a God of love.
73
1.01 am
DCI Eve Clay and DS Karl Stone watched Raymond and his mother at the desk with Sergeant Harris.
‘Have you been drinking or taking drugs, Raymond?’ asked Sergeant Harris.
‘Yeah, I have, yeah. Weed, vodka...’
‘Have you got mental health issues?’
‘No, I’m cool—’
‘No, you’re not cool, Raymond,’ said Carmel Dare. ‘He hasn’t been taking his medication. He’s got a psychotic condition that makes him delusional. And he’ll take any drug he can lay his hands on. Ecstasy. Speed—’
‘Are you trying to get me sent away forever? I want a lawyer.’
‘How are we going to do this?’ asked Stone.
‘I’ve called the duty medic in to look him over. I hope we can talk to him first thing in the morning, let him sleep it off. He was mostly lucid in the car on the way here.’
‘Where’s your coat?’ asked Carmel.
‘I lost it when I was running after Jasmine in the dark, in Sefton Park.’
‘I did say mostly lucid,’ muttered Clay.
The front door opened and Dr Baker the duty medic entered, looking around and catching Clay’s eye. She pointed at Raymond as he came over.
‘What’s the problem and when do you want me to examine him?’
‘Weed, booze and not taking his anti-psychotic medication,’ said Clay.
‘How badly and how soon do you need him?’
‘He’s up for murder, one count for sure, probably three.’
‘I can prescribe anti-psychotic drugs right now but it takes time for them to build up in the body and take effect.’
‘Empty your pockets, Raymond,’ said Sergeant Harris. He dug his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and put a mobile phone, a disposable lighter and a handful of change on the desk.
‘Sergeant Harris,’ said Clay.
Raymond turned to look at her.
‘Can you pass his phone on to our ICT expert Poppy Waters.’
An expression of deep unease crossed Raymond’s face.
‘We’ve got access to anything that’s on your phone, Raymond,’ said Clay.
He turned and looked at Sergeant Harris, who tapped the desk. ‘And the rest.’
Raymond produced two joints.
‘Strange as it may seem, Mr Dare, we aren’t too keen on our clients possessing drugs in the cell. As the custody sergeant responsible for your wellbeing while you’re my guest, I’d be very remiss in my duties if I didn’t say either hand it all over or we’ll strip-search you.’
Confused, Raymond looked at his mother.
‘Give it all to Sergeant Harris or he’ll have to look up your crack!’
He dipped in and produced a small plastic bag containing several white pills.
‘It’s ecstasy. I don’t do it, I just...’
‘As in you don’t do it, you just sell it?’ asked Sergeant Harris.
‘I don’t do it, like regularly, I just take it... every so often.’
‘That was some mental about-turn,’ said Dr Baker. ‘He’s lucid enough. I think he’s all yours first thing in the morning, Eve.’
‘I’ll book the interview suite for eight am,’ said Clay.
Raymond looked at her with an expression that was filled with both mental darkness and light, like there was an automatic switch going on and off repeatedly in his skull.
‘Any jewellery?’ asked Harris.
‘Nah!’
‘Nah? What’s that chain around your neck?’
Raymond looked blank as
he touched the back of his neck and said, ‘Oh, yeah!’ He unclasped the chain and handed over a silver crucifix.
‘Sergeant Harris, can I have a look at Raymond in the medical room?’ asked Dr Baker.
‘Don’t be putting me on any medication or shit,’ said Raymond.
‘Eight am. Interview suite 1. And hope for the best,’ said Clay, as Sergeant Harris escorted Raymond and his mother away from the desk, following Dr Baker.
74
1.34 am
As he turned into Jeremiah Street, Jack Dare wondered if the sheer weight of his sorrow had somehow affected his senses and tipped him over into the first stages of lunacy.
At the end of the street, there were marked police cars and a white Scientific Support vehicle. Officers in white protective suits came in and out, and across the street neighbours had assembled to watch.
As he came closer, a non-uniformed officer stopped him and said, ‘Can you not see the Do Not Cross tape?’
Jack looked and saw that the tape started where his house ended and the neighbours’ house began. The officer showed Jack his warrant card.
‘Yeah, I see it now, DS Hendricks.’
‘My God, what’s happened here?’ Hendricks nodded at Jasmine in Jack’s arms.
‘I live there, Mr Hendricks. What’s happening?’
‘What’s your name, lad?’
‘Jack Dare.’ He held on a little more tightly to Jasmine.
‘Have you got a brother?’
‘Yes. Raymond. I need to take my dog inside to wash her in the bath.’
‘I’m sorry, you can’t go in. Your whole house is being searched. Your brother Raymond and your mother are at Trinity Road. He’s in big trouble.’
‘He killed my dog, my Jasmine.’
‘He did?’
‘He slashed her throat and hid the body in Sefton Park.’
‘He’s going to be questioned about the murder of a human being, maybe more than one. You don’t look surprised, Jack.’
Jack looked down at Jasmine and then at Hendricks, tears streaming down his face.