Forward Slash

by Louise Voss

  Gary had been round both days since, making Amy soup that she didn’t eat and drinks that she couldn’t stomach. She begged him for every detail he knew about Lewis, but he claimed to be as shocked as she was about his friend’s secret life. He had met him a couple of years ago, he said, at a networking event, and had thought he seemed like a nice guy, someone who knew their stuff when it came to social networking. He deeply regretted introducing him to Amy. He had no idea how Lewis had encountered Becky, but he assumed he must have seen her once when he came to Gary’s flat, and maybe Gary had told him she used CupidsWeb – another thing he regretted. But he had no idea that Lewis was a psychopath – of course he didn’t.

  ‘No one ever does, do they?’ he said reasonably. ‘People always say serial killers seem normal and nice. I saw a programme about it on TV. They’re everywhere, living among us.’

  She had shivered as he’d trailed off, realizing he’d said the wrong thing.

  Last night, she’d asked Gary to stay – not for sex, but just to hold her. He respected her wishes, didn’t try anything, just held her in his strong arms. With him beside her, she was able to sleep at last.

  Just before she woke she had a dream, a flashback to the fight at the moment that Lewis had fallen into the pool, dragging her with him. She awoke gasping for air. Sitting on the toilet a minute later, a memory from the dream came back to her. Just before Gary had Tasered Lewis, the psychopath had said something to him.

  She went back into the bedroom and looked down at Gary, who was sleeping peacefully.

  Then she went outside. Her beloved bike was parked by the kerb. Yesterday, she and Gary had gone round to Paul ‘TooledUp’ Halsall’s and told him in no uncertain terms that the bike was hers, that the agreement she’d signed was worthless. Gary had squared up to him until Paul had chucked the keys at Amy, snarling, ‘It’s a piece of shit anyway.’ Fortunately, he’d turned out not to be at all tooled up.

  If only it was so easy to get Becky back.

  Now here she sat in the interview room opposite Declan and Bob, a steaming mug of tea in front of her.

  She took a deep breath. ‘When Gary and Lewis were fighting by the swimming pool, Gary said something to Lewis. You were yelling so loud, I couldn’t hear what he said.’

  Declan shook his head. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear either.’

  ‘But there was CCTV in the room, wasn’t there? I saw it when he flicked between the rooms, when he had me in the kitchen.’

  ‘Why do you think it’s important?’ asked Bob.

  Amy sighed. ‘I don’t know. It was just, from the expression on his face, Lewis looked disappointed. And Gary – well, I could swear that he smirked. I’m sure he did. It didn’t come back to me until I replayed it in my head when I was in bed last night.’

  ‘And are you sure it wasn’t just a dream?’ Bob asked.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Declan said, getting up from the desk.

  They sat and stared at the small monitor as Bob forwarded through the recording from Lewis’s pool room.

  ‘He had it set up to record twenty-four hours a day and to tape over the previous twenty-four hours every day. I guess he was scared of someone breaking in and finding what he’d been doing,’ Declan said. ‘Luckily, we found and stopped the system the other day.’

  Amy watched Bob forward through the recording, hugging herself when it got to the point where Lewis took her through the pool room and opened the door to his underground flat. Bob fast-forwarded until they saw Declan and Gary appear, then onto the point where Lewis and Amy re-emerged. When they got to the fight beside the pool, he slowed it down. There was the moment when Gary, the camera pointing across the pool at his face, had said something to Lewis, just before Gary Tasered him. Bob stopped and rewound.

  ‘Can you zoom in?’ Amy said. ‘It’s too small.’ The camera had been mounted on the wall so it was only just possible to see Lewis’s lips move.

  ‘Let me try.’ Bob fiddled with the controls, zooming in on Lewis’s face.

  ‘It’s so pixellated,’ Amy said, frustrated. She was both relieved and horrified that she hadn’t misremembered the moment.

  Declan peered at the screen, his nose just inches from it. ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘We might be able to clean this up,’ Bob said, ‘and make it clearer.’

  ‘We need someone who can lip read,’ Declan said.

  Bob looked at him across the desk. ‘What about that girl who works in analysis? The deaf one.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  Bob left the room, leaving Declan and Amy staring at the frozen monochrome screen, Gary and Lewis suspended in the moment before Amy had plunged into the pool.

  ‘What do you know about Gary?’ Declan asked. ‘He’s your friend, isn’t he?’

  Amy had to turn away from the screen, the memory of what had happened next was too painful. ‘I did suspect him of having something to do with Becky’s disappearance last week.’ She explained about the incident with Gary forgetting to double-lock the door. ‘But he convinced me it was an innocent mistake. He seems so nice and … normal.’

  ‘They often do,’ Declan said.

  Nathan’s face entered Amy’s head and she nodded. ‘It’s just because he was friends with Lewis … I’m sure he is nice and normal. I mean, we know that Lewis is the killer. I just want to know what Gary said to him, and why.’

  Bob re-entered the room with a young woman he introduced as Samantha. She sat down at the desk and peered at the screen, Bob zooming in as close as he could, fiddling with the picture to make it as crisp as possible. Amy watched Lewis’s lips move again and a cold finger traced its way up her spine. It was his expression, the disappointment in his eyes. Like his old friend had let him down.

  ‘Can you tell what he said?’ Declan asked Samantha, and Amy watched the deaf woman as she gestured at Bob to rewind it and play it again.

  Amy rode her bike back up to London. DI Adams and DS Clewley needed to speak to their SIO and run a couple of background checks on Gary before driving up to interview him again.

  ‘Go straight home,’ Declan said. Amy had already texted Gary to check he wasn’t still at her flat. ‘Lock the door – just in case. Don’t try to talk to him. Don’t do anything stupid, OK?’

  She promised not to.

  But as she weaved through the south London streets, she couldn’t help but take a slight detour past Gary and Becky’s building and, as she passed, she saw Gary come out, carrying a black holdall. He was looking down, so didn’t see her. She watched in her mirror as he got into his car and pulled off.

  Fuck it, she thought, and turned the bike round, following him at a discreet distance.

  The traffic through south London was thick and bad-tempered as always. Amy felt calm, no sign of an impending panic attack, no sweating palms or booming heart. The likelihood was, Becky was dead. But at least she might finally know.

  At some point, she entered Kent, and soon found herself in Bromley, a town Amy had been to a few times on shopping trips. Gary drove through the suburbs, seemingly unaware he was being followed. Then he stopped on a quiet residential road and got out of the car. He looked left and right but didn’t see Amy as she parked further up the street behind a van.

  Gary got out of the car and trotted up some steps, letting himself in to a big tatty house, clearly converted into flats.

  Amy jogged up the road and stood outside the building, her heart thumping hard. She didn’t know which flat he’d gone into. She paused, and realized she should call Declan on the mobile number the policeman had given her. It went to voicemail so Amy left a message saying where she was.

  She walked up to the door and braced herself, her finger hovering over the panel of buzzers, wondering which one to press.

  50

  Becky

  Monday, 29 July

  It is days before I can get Gary to talk any more. I feel so weak that my lips barely move, and he has to feed me with a spoon, like a baby.
Soup or porridge, gloopy stuff like that. When he leaves again he doesn’t bother to put the duct tape over my mouth because he knows that I don’t have the energy to scream. He’s calmer. He seems almost … happy.

  He has just helped me to the toilet and watched me as I pee. I’m past caring. I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and literally don’t recognize myself.

  ‘Can I have a bath?’ I whisper. ‘I stink.’

  ‘Yeah, you do,’ he says, a look of disgust on his face. ‘But I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you.’

  His whole manner has changed. He doesn’t look at me with those puppy-dog eyes any more. Instead, he looks at me as if I revolt him.

  Like I’m a mess that needs to be cleaned up.

  He escorts me back to the stinking bed and pushes me down onto the sheets, securing the handcuffs. My arms spasm with pain.

  There’s something I need to know. I’m afraid to ask, but force out the words. ‘Please tell me, Gary. Amy, is she …?’

  ‘Yeah, Amy’s safe. Lewis is dead. You don’t need to be worried about Amy …’

  I’m confused, but so relieved. Amy is safe! ‘Oh, thank God. If Lewis is dead, you can let me go! He can’t drop you in it with the police any more – and I won’t, I swear.’

  ‘No, but you might. And I can’t take that chance. Besides …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s something you should know. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not, but I think I should. The thing is … Amy and I are in love.’

  What?

  I gape at him in confusion.

  ‘I’m sorry, Becky. For a while, I thought I loved both of you. I loved you first, so much, but there’s only so much rejection a guy can handle, you know. I mean, you don’t even seem to enjoy it that much when we make love these days. After you went missing—’

  ‘After you kidnapped me—’

  ‘Well, I was helping Amy look for you. We got close …’

  I can’t help a weak laugh. ‘You were helping Amy look for me, even though you had me locked up in your dead mum’s flat all the—’

  ‘Time. I told you, to stop Lewis getting to you,’ he insisted stubbornly. Then he sat up straighter. ‘He really was a psychopath, you know. Two dozen girls, they think. Body parts in jars, torture chamber in his basement. Sick, sick stuff. You had a lucky escape … But now – I’m sorry, Becks. It’s too risky now for me to keep you here. You’ve become a loose end. I don’t want to break your heart but I think we should end it.’

  ‘Please, let me go! I won’t tell anyone, I promise.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. How could you not? That’s what exes always do, isn’t it? Blab about their past loves.’

  He picks up a pillow and studies it. ‘I’ve been trying to think about the best way to do it. Stabbing is so messy. I don’t want you to suffer too much, Becks. I mean, I did love you not so long ago. You’ll always be special to me. Amy and I will always remember you. And I’ll look after her for ever. Don’t you worry.’

  He comes towards me with the pillow. ‘Try not to struggle too much,’ he says.

  I scream.

  51

  Declan

  Monday, 29 July

  ‘We had a deal.’

  Those were the words that Samantha had read on Gary’s lips. A deal. As Samantha told them what she could see, Amy had clutched her chest and Declan had felt that quickening of his own blood, the addictive jolt like a strong shot of coffee.

  Declan had quizzed Amy, asking her for every piece of information she had about Gary Davidson, making her describe her encounter with Gary and Lewis, and how Gary had acted when she had first gone round to see Becky after receiving the email.

  Amy looked stricken as she talked, kept rubbing her arms, her eyes wild with horror. After Bob had left the room to look Gary up on their database, Amy had stared at Declan. ‘I slept with him,’ she whispered.

  Declan had sent her home.

  Now Bob came back into the office, his face grim. ‘He doesn’t have a criminal record. In fact, I can’t find any record of him at all. No National Insurance number. No passport. Gary Davidson doesn’t exist.’

  ‘He exists, all right. That’s just not his real name.’

  ‘We should get going,’ Bob said.

  Declan, though, was deep in thought, remembering the video he had watched the day before. It hadn’t taken the Hi-Tech Crime Unit long to decrypt the files; they had found a series of videos that Vine had made in which he described each of the murders he had committed. Watching him talking into the camera, casually describing the torture and murder of two dozen women over fifteen years, was chilling. Some of the recordings featured clips of the women’s mutilated bodies, or gruesome stills, and Declan wondered if he would sit and watch them back, reliving his crimes for kicks. Whatever, this was his legacy – and Declan wished he could delete every one. Imagine if the videos leaked onto YouTube … every sicko in the world would be attracted to them like flies to shit.

  Among the recordings Vine had left behind was a short clip that had been recorded five years ago. In it, Lewis had shorter but thicker hair than he had when he had died, and several days’ worth of stubble. He sipped from a mug of tea or coffee as he spoke, peering directly into the camera:

  We met her at the reception of this conference I spoke at. I can’t even remember what it was called. Lots of losers thinking they could make a quick buck out of this newfangled invention called the Internet, every witless business in the world thinking the web was paved with gold. Very few of them as clever or talented as me.

  My talk went brilliantly, and afterwards I was approached by a young woman who wanted to talk to me about an idea she had for a site. The moment she started speaking I stopped listening. I was too busy staring. She looked exactly like her. Denise. My beautiful mother.

  At that point, Declan had paused the video and taken down the photo of Amber, holding it beside a photo of Denise Vine they had found at Lewis’s house. To say that Amber and Denise looked the same was stretching the truth to its limits. Yes, they both had blonde hair and blue eyes, but Amber was far prettier than Lewis’s mother, whose hair came from a bottle, whose eyes were bloodshot and dull, whose face was puffier and rattier and, let’s face it, uglier than Amber’s. The young woman Lewis had encountered in the hotel was – just like Amy and Becky – a highly idealized version of Denise Vine, a woman who’d abused her teenage son before killing herself.

  Declan had restarted the video.

  I wanted to take Amber – that was her lovely name – back to my hotel room right away, to impale her on the sheets. But then I was whisked away by the conference organizer, and Amber was swallowed up by the crowd.

  I saw her again later that evening, at the drinks reception. I was sitting with Gavin, and we were already at the end of our second bottle of champagne. Plus, Gavin had done some coke and was talking bollocks as usual. I half listened … and then Amber drifted into view.

  She came over and asked if she could sit with us. I acted as warm and friendly as I could, and nodded and smiled as she talked about her frankly shit business idea, her words obscured behind my visions of myself sucking her nipples and rubbing my cock against her cherubic face.

  Gavin bought a third bottle of Bollinger and Amber had a few glasses. She got giggly. She started telling us about her oppressive, tedious parents. I made sympathetic noises. I told her that maybe I could help her with her business, give her advice, maybe invest some capital. She got terribly excited. Gavin sat there, staring at her like a dog staring at a chocolate biscuit.

  I suggested that we go for a drive, go and get something to eat. I’d heard there was an excellent gastro-pub just out of town. We could talk more about her business idea and maybe work out a start-up plan. Excited, and a little tipsy, Amber agreed.

  I drive well when I’m drunk. I was driving a Jeep back then, when I wasn’t cruising around in my Porsche. Amber got in the back and Gavin sat next to me. We exchanged
a look. This was in the days before roasting became a familiar term, but I could tell he had that kind of scenario in mind.

  We drove out into the countryside. It was a warm evening and the air throbbed with the sound of grasshoppers. I saw a ‘for sale’ sign out front of a farm, with the name of a development company, which told me the property was empty. The dark farm buildings were just visible in the moonlight. I pulled up and indicated for Gavin to get out and open the gate. As we drove through, Amber goes, ‘Where are we?’ She was really groggy by then.

  I got out of the Jeep and opened Amber’s door, taking her hand and helping her out. As she leaned forward, I got a good eyeful of her creamy breasts and it took all my self-control not to reach out and grab them.

  ‘This isn’t a gastro-pub,’ she said.

  ‘I thought we could take a little walk,’ I said. I felt as if I was in a film, speaking movie dialogue. ‘It’s a beautiful night for it.’

  Maybe it was the way Gavin was staring at her, but suddenly Amber looked frightened. ‘I want to go back,’ she said.

  ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk,’ I replied, ignoring her plea.

  She said again that she wanted to go back.

  Which was when I grabbed her tits, with both hands, giving them a squeeze. She screamed, so I clamped my hand over her mouth and pushed her to the ground. She bit me. The little bitch actually bit me. My vision flashed red and suddenly it was like I was staring down at Denise, and I remembered how she had promised to love me for ever, but had abandoned me, and in that moment a pure hatred enveloped me.

  ‘Hold her,’ I said to Gavin, who was panting with drunken lust. He stared at me. ‘Fucking hold her.’

  As Gavin held down Amber, his hand over her mouth, I ran over to the Jeep and took the knife from the glove compartment. I had been carrying the knife around for months. When I put it in there I told myself it was for self-defence – a lot of people were jealous of me – but maybe, secretly, I had been dreaming of this moment.