by Mark Roberts
‘They weren’t there.’
‘You must have been in a lot better shape than them because you drove a car from the Dingle to Aigburth Vale. And guess what, Raymond? Well done, all the evidence points to the fact that you drove safely. You didn’t weave in and out of the lanes. It looks like you had your wits about you. Would you say that was a fair comment?’
‘No comment.’
‘Do you think, with hindsight, you should have put her shoes and underwear on the front seat, so they’d have been more damaged by the fire?’
‘No comment.’
‘Do you think it was a mistake to leave them in the boot, which was left largely untouched?’
‘No comment.’
‘DCI Clay is unavailable at the moment, but when she returns she intends to charge you with rape and murder. What do you think, Raymond?’
‘No comment.’
‘If you cooperate with us, the judge will take it into account when sentencing.’
Winters closed the interview and called for Sergeant Harris.
‘Mr Robson, I suggest you advise your client of the process that is about to follow, and how cooperating really is his best way to make his life slightly better in the long run.’
As Sergeant Harris opened the door, Raymond looked as if he were listening to an invisible man towering over him, and only he could hear his voice. He nodded slowly, as if in agreement.
Winters hit the record button.
‘I didn’t rape her. She wanted sex. It was afterwards. She hit me and I got angry and she threatened to cry rape and I panicked and I pushed her to the ground and she started to scream and I told her to shut the fuck up, but she wouldn’t so I got on top of her and put my hands around her throat and I squeezed as hard as I could and it was like her eyes were going to pop out of her head and then and then and then she started to get weaker and weaker and it was like she couldn’t struggle anymore and she went like a dead dog like Jasmine because I slit her throat the bitch the white bitch two dead bitch dogs...’
‘Did you set her on fire, did you pour petrol on Dominika’s face and head?’
‘I must have done because I remember when I realised she was dead but she was still warm and I had a massive hard-on so I shagged her again and that was the best one because she was there but she wasn’t there, y’know what I mean? I went to the car and got the petrol can from the boot.’
Winters formally opened the interview.
‘Can you tell us that all over again, Raymond?’
‘Yeah, I can. Because I’m fucked now, aren’t I?’
‘Did you rape Dominika Zima?’
‘I didn’t rape her. She wanted sex. It was afterwards.’
As Raymond Dare took a deep breath in through his nostrils, Winters wondered if it had occurred to the seventeen year old that the next joint he smoked or pill he popped would be behind bars on a segregated wing for sex offenders.
‘Tell me again, Raymond, about your encounter with Dominika Zima?’
‘She hit me and I got angry and she threatened to cry rape and I panicked...’
101
4.34 pm
Clay sat on the back pew of St Luke’s Roman Catholic Church, in the place Kate Thorpe usually occupied, looking at the church from the old lady’s point of view. She eyed the unrolled painting on her lap and drank in the details before looking up at the church and replaying what had happened during the consecration at mass.
On the altar, Father Aaron Bell had held up the chalice, his eyes closed and his mouth open to say the ritual words. She imagined those words echoing in the vast spaces of the church where only three old people attended mass. Oblivious to everything other than the rite he was performing, Father Aaron failed to notice the young girl with a shaven head and wearing striped pyjamas who appeared in the open doorway of the vestry. The girl, Marta Ondřej, stayed in the doorway for up to ten seconds, making eye contact with the old lady on the back pew, before disappearing back into the vestry as quickly and quietly as she had appeared as Kate made her way towards her.
All the detail was in Kate Thorpe’s painting.
Clay stood up and walked down the aisle towards the vestry to put together the pieces in her own mind.
She leaped forward in time by five minutes to the end of the mass.
She imagined Father Aaron walking down the step from the altar, and she walked into the empty vestry, projecting the priest ahead of herself and his reaction when the locked door to the small room, where he usually placed his rail of colourful vestments, was open and Marta Ondřej stood facing him in silence. She wondered how Father Aaron had managed to force her to be so quiet, what terror he had exposed her to.
Clay opened the door to the small room and turned on the bare light bulb. She took out her iPhone and, standing in the space, played back the eight pieces of film taken of Marta when she was in captivity. She checked the walls around her against the walls on the film, and noted the texture of the plasterwork beneath the yellowing white of the paintwork. They were a perfect match.
She paused the footage just before the light came on, and turned off the light in the room in which she stood. Clay turned the light back on and listened for the crackle of old electrical cables. The light flickered before it settled into life. She stepped out of the confined space and watched the light turning on in the film. The effect and density of the light was the same, as was the crackle and flicker.
She imagined the priest pushing Marta back inside the room, glancing over his shoulder as he did so, to make sure none of his flock had arrived to visit him over some insignificant troubles. None of them had. Good. He locked the door once the child was inside, changed quickly out of his robes and went back inside the church.
Clay pictured his relief when he saw Iris and Mr Rotherham heading out through the main door. He looked around and saw Kate Thorpe praying in the Chapel to the Virgin Mary at the left-hand side of the altar.
She walked in front of the altar rail towards the chapel and knelt before the statue of the Virgin Mary as Kate would have done, as she did after every mass.
On the floor beneath the Virgin Mary’s feet, Clay saw a colour picture of a woman in an American court room, handcuffed and foot-chained, being led away by armed guards. She read the caption out loud. ‘Serial killer Kelly-Ann Carter: her final appeal against the death penalty has failed.’
Clay picked up the press cutting and read about the fate of the female white supremacist and what Barney Cole had said about her.
She took the picture of the seven core American Black Sun activists from her pocket and a feeling overwhelmed her as she looked at their faces: that she was staring at something that was at once clear and yet hidden. She picked out Kelly-Ann Carter’s face in the group, folded the picture and put it back in her pocket.
Looking at the altar, she pictured Father Aaron weighing up that she was the only person in the congregation who could have seen the child. The relief he must have felt that it was her who had the chance to potentially see the girl was enormous.
The old woman? Clay imagined the priest considering the last picture she may have shown him. The Virgin Mary, hair in large rollers, wearing slippers and pink pyjamas, and looking a little depressed as she pushed Jesus as a toddler past the drinks aisle in Asda on Smithdown Road. No one, no one would believe such a scatty old woman.
Clay got up from the kneeler and headed back to the vestry.
She heard Hendricks’s footsteps coming through the recently rammed back door of the church and into the vestry.
‘How are things in the house, Bill?’ asked Clay.
‘There are gaps in his wardrobe. I think he’s packed a bag. He’s left his car but I went into the desk drawer in his office. His passport’s not there, his wallet’s not shown up. I’ve posted his image to all ports and airports.’
‘Thank you, Bill.’
‘Terry Mason and Paul Price want to know when you want them to pull the vestry to pieces?’
‘Whatever they’re doing in the house, please ask them to stop, and start inside the cupboard built in the wall of the vestry.’
‘What are you doing now, Eve?’
‘I’m walking down Grant Avenue to check on Kate Thorpe.’
102
4.38 pm
‘Jack, your brother has admitted to a series of extremely serious offences.’ Winters dead-eyed Jack across the desk. ‘He’s denied rape but frankly, we don’t believe him, and Dr Lamb, the pathologist who conducted the post-mortem on Dominika Zima’s body, isn’t supporting his series of events on that matter.’
Jack looked at the digits turning on the audio recorder to the side of the table.
‘Do you know Dominika Zima?’ asked Winters.
‘I know of her. She sent Raymond pornographic pictures of herself over social media. I tried to warn him. He didn’t listen to me. He never does.’
‘He’s admitted strangling Dominika.’
‘Where was she from?’
‘Czech Republic. Why?’
‘I was just wondering.’
‘He’s admitted murder, Jack. He’s also admitted setting her body on fire post-mortem. But he’s also admitted that before he did that, he committing an act of necrophilia on the woman’s body. What are your thoughts on that, Jack?’
Jack looked Winters in the eye. ‘I am disgusted with him. I am ashamed of him. I wish I’d never clapped eyes on him, let alone be his brother. But just because we have the same mother, that doesn’t make me a party to his crimes.’ He sighed from the core of his being and looked briefly at Mr Robson before finishing, ‘I categorically and completely deny involvement in this abominable criminal behaviour.’
‘Excuse me, Detective Constable Winters,’ said Mr Robson. ‘Jack and Raymond have the same mother but are from different fathers. The DNA’s back from Dominika Zima’s skirt. The only secretions on the skirt were from Raymond. There is no forensic evidence to suggest that my client had any involvement in this crime.’
‘You’re absolutely right, Mr Robson. But it’s early days yet, and this isn’t the only crime we’re investigating. We have far to go with both Jack and Raymond.’ Winters held Jack’s gaze. ‘You’ve done time for a hate crime. Your little brother admits to a hate crime but won’t give up his friends, CJ and Buster. Are you CJ?’
‘No.’
‘Are you Buster?’
‘No.’
‘Then who are they?’
‘Ask him. Ask Raymond. I’ve never met them and never wish to. I have barred them from my mother’s house because of the bad influence they have had on my brother, my half-brother who as of this moment I disown.’
There was a knock at the door. When Sergeant Harris opened it, screams from deep inside the building filtered into the interview suite.
‘DC Winters, you’re needed immediately,’ said Sergeant Harris.
Winters concluded the interview swiftly and followed Harris onto the corridor outside. The screams from the cells rose higher as they headed in their direction.
Sergeant Harris filled Winters in. ‘It’s Raymond Dare. He’s having a massive episode. Medics are on their way, including a shrink, and he’s being restrained by five officers but it’s like he’s possessed by the devil.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘Broad Oak have got a bed for him.’
‘What’s your take on it?’
‘I’ve seen it before, Clive. On top of his psychosis, he’s suffering an extreme episode of hypermania.’
‘I’ll travel with him to Broad Oak when he’s been spiked. Is Eve in the loop?’
‘Of course.’
Winters opened the door to the corridor housing the holding cells and drew in a sharp breath as he realised the true scale of the storm.
‘Jesus, the noise out of him. Out of all of them. It’s like bedlam.’
‘Ja! Ja! Jajajajajajajaja!’
Winters headed for the cell door behind which the loudest voice raged and raged. He looked in through the observation slot and saw five huge police officers on his arms and legs, with one lying sideways across Raymond Dare’s thighs. Raymond banged his head against the blanket between his skull and the floor, and froth that formed around his mouth rolled down his red-raw cheeks.
He writhed and thrashed, screaming out bursts of incomprehensible language, his eyes wild with the ultimate rage of a blighted life. The alien language slowly morphed into a recognisable sound, and when the sound became clear, it was screamed out at the loudest and most enraged pitch.
‘Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja!’
Footsteps hurried down the corridor. ‘Paramedics!’ came the voice with them.
Sergeant Harris unlocked the cell door.
‘Jaaaaaaaaaaaacccccccccccckkkkkkkkk!’
103
5.32 pm
From Kate Thorpe’s front door, Clay could see Hendricks under the streetlights on the pavement outside St Luke’s vestry, connecting her call on his iPhone.
‘Bill, can you bring the ram down to Kate Thorpe’s house.’
‘Eve, what’s the matter?’
‘It’s not good. I’ve called an ambulance. Hurry please, Bill.’
As she closed the call down, she saw Hendricks running at full speed towards his car.
Clay turned back to the living-room window. The inside of the glass was darkened with smoke, and the clean white net curtains were now a dozen shades of black.
She tried to look through the chinks in the curtains, but there was a dense band of smoke hanging in the air in the parlour.
Returning to the front door, Clay lifted the letterbox but then remembered that shouting out to Kate Thorpe was completely futile. As she raised the brass, her senses of smell and taste were overwhelmed and, for a moment, she was back in the Adamczak brothers’ flat for the first time, smelling the horror of freshly burned human flesh.
She heard Hendricks’s car powering the short distance down Grant Avenue; it screeched to a halt on the grass verge opposite her. He jumped out and crossed the road with the ram in his hand. In the distance, the edge of an ambulance siren approached.
‘Shit!’ he said, looking at the bay window and curtains.
He rammed the door, and it sprang back; the hall behind it was swimming in wreaths of smoke.
Clay hurried through the smoke-filled hall to the partially open parlour door, heat pulsing through its wooden panels. She opened the door wider with the sole of her right foot and trapped smoke poured from the room.
She reached in and found a light switch. She pressed it down but the light didn’t come on.
Inside the parlour, smoke rose from the old 1960s three-piece suite and the carpet. Holding her breath, and blinking against the stinging air, Clay moved deeper into the room. On the wall to her left, she saw that the surfaces of Kate Thorpe’s visionary paintings were all distorted, their vivid details hidden behind a haze of grime.
Hendricks appeared at her back and handed her a torch.
‘Bill, can you check the rest of the house for me.’
She explored the space in front of her with the torch, the light picking out the heaving, polluted air. Through the smog, she found the wooden fire surround and what remained of the fireplace itself.
‘Jesus,’ said Clay, focusing on Kate Thorpe’s corpse, as the smell of cooked flesh bit down on her nose, tongue and throat.
Kate Thorpe was on her hands and knees in front of the fireplace, all her clothing charred to ashes and her back and buttocks blackened and blistered, the leather of her shoes melted into the surface fabric of her feet.
The fire in the grate was out and full of ashes. What was left of Kate Thorpe’s head was resting on the metal basket.
She shone the torchlight on the space where the back of her head should have been but all Clay could make out were chunks of blackened skull in the fireplace and the charred top of her spinal column.
Clay looked at the old lady’s hands pressed down against the hearth, the backs of
her hands and her feet duck-taped to the tiles; her hands were weighed down by a heavy poker, her palms melted into the surface of the hearth.
Each in-breath became increasingly painful, the smoke Clay was inhaling rapidly stripping the moisture from her throat and nose. She made her way to the bay window, turned the latch on the largest middle window and lifted the sash. She stepped quickly out of the room and into the hallway, and contacted Mason on her iPhone.
Opening the front door, she stayed on the step and drank in cold air, tears streaming from her stinging eyes.
‘Terry, I need you to drop what you’re doing in the church and the priest’s house and put Paul Price in charge of those scenes. You’ll both need back-up Scientific Support officers. Ring Admiral Street, see who they’ve got.’ The stinging in her throat was creeping into the top halves of her lungs.
‘You’re splitting up a winning team, Eve. Are you sure?’
‘You’ve both got extremely high levels of forensic knowledge of this shit-fest and we’ve now got three A1 priority sites. A church and two houses within spitting distance of each other. If I keep you both in the priest’s house and the church and I put a fresh untried team here, things are going to get missed.’
‘What’s this other house?’
‘131 Grant Avenue. One of our witnesses, Kate Thorpe, has been murdered in her front room.’ She coughed and felt like her lungs were banging against her ribcage. ‘Anything to report from the house and the church, Terry?’
‘We’ve found the rest of Marta Ondřej’s hair, Eve.’
A light went on inside the darkest place in her mind and she took the picture of the American Black Sun activists from her coat pocket. ‘Under the boards in the room attached to the vestry in the church.’
‘Spot on.’
‘Anything else under there?’
‘Yes. We found an early 1980s Smith & Wesson four-inch 686.371 mag revolver and a box of shells for it. We also found an empty box of shells for a Magnum Desert Eagle. The semi-automatic that uses those shells wasn’t there but the empty box was. Again, it’s an early 1980s American handgun.’