The Rules of Murder

by The Rules of Murder (epub)

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  A prison guard Dani hadn’t met before arrived shortly after Collins had left, and led Dani and Easton through. When the guard opened the interview room door, Dani spied inside and saw Ben and his lawyer, Gregory Daley, sitting the other side of the table, nattering to each other quietly. They quickly stopped their discussion and looked expectantly to the new arrivals. Dani stepped in first but then stopped, partially blocking the doorway.

  ‘Actually, Mr Daley, you’re not needed today,’ Dani said, matter-of-factly.

  Daley looked perplexed, his nose twitched with indignation. ‘Good morning to you too,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Detective, but that’s really not your call to—’

  ‘Ben. Tell him,’ Dani said. ‘Just you and me today. DS Easton and Mr Daley can keep each other company for a while.’

  Ben sniffed as though he wasn’t sure whether he was impressed or annoyed by Dani’s blunt demand. Dani turned to Easton who looked a little bemused – she hadn’t pre-warned him this was her plan – but she was confident he wouldn’t go against her. Not now. Not after what had happened to her and Jason. She was doing things her way from now on. McNair would surely understand that too, even if she’d previously forbidden Dani from seeing her brother on his own. In a policing capacity at least.

  ‘Ben?’ Dani said, facing back to him.

  Ben turned to his lawyer and mumbled something. Daley grumbled in response and started to shuffle the papers in front of him.

  ‘Very well, we’ll go along with your little game for now,’ he said to Dani. ‘But I’ll be in the room next door, listening and watching.’

  ‘Actually, no you won’t,’ Dani said. ‘Easton will take you for a coffee. Courtesy of the public purse, unless you offer otherwise.’

  Daley glared at Dani.

  ‘It’s fine, Gregory, really,’ Ben said.

  Daley said nothing more. He packed up his things and was soon heading towards Dani.

  ‘Whatever you’re playing at…’

  He lost his train of thought, or perhaps just thought better about whatever threat he was about to deliver. He stomped past Dani and he and Easton disappeared. The guard shrugged before he closed and locked the door.

  ‘I love it when you show your bitchy side,’ Ben said, with a childish smirk on his face.

  ‘Shut up, Ben,’ Dani said. ‘You and your lawyer might think this is a game, but I really don’t.’

  She took one of the seats opposite her brother.

  ‘I knew you’d be back,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you did. You made sure of that by withholding relevant information the last two times I was here.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not a bad person, D—’

  ‘Not a bad person? You’re a fucking murderer!’

  His eyes pinched with disdain. Any amusement she’d seen earlier was now entirely gone. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said.

  ‘I really don’t give a damn what you meant. You know why I’m here. And this time I’m not taking no for an answer. Tell me what you know about Curtis.’

  Ben didn’t answer straight away. He held Dani’s eye. Neither broke the contact. ‘I think I made myself clear last time. I’ll give you what I know when—’

  ‘Damn it, Ben, people are dying! Don’t you realise that? Don’t you care? Innocent people who were just doing their jobs, who are going about their everyday lives, are dying horrible deaths because Curtis is on some insane mission.’ Dani’s words became more and more choked as she went on. She tried hard to push back the tears that were welling. ‘He attacked Jason. Me too. I was there. I tried to save him… I don’t even know if he’s going to make it.’

  No, it was no use. She wanted to be strong but there was too much raw emotion and tears were flowing. She didn’t even attempt to wipe them away as they cascaded down her cheeks.

  Ben said nothing.

  Dani reached into her bag and took out her phone. She scrolled to the picture of Jason in the bed at the hospital. She could barely look at it. She pushed the phone across the desk.

  ‘He’s in a coma. On life support,’ she said. Ben’s eyes were still fixed on her. ‘Look at him! Look at what Curtis did!’

  Ben’s gaze finally moved down to the phone. He only looked for a couple of seconds, before his eyes moved up again and he let out a big sigh.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Sorry? Dani wondered. Sorry for what Curtis did? Or sorry for not talking and helping when he could?

  ‘I had no idea you and Jason would become involved,’ Ben said, shaking his head with what Dani took as genuine dismay. Or perhaps he was just a good actor.

  What was it Collins had said about mimicry?

  ‘But what do you know?’ Dani said. ‘You have to tell me. Do you really want more people to die?’

  ‘Of course I don’t! But I gave you the choice before, Dani. That was days ago. I gave you the choice and you showed your true colours. You don’t give a shit about me.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I’m doing my job as best I can. I’m trying to save lives. I’m trying to catch a killer. You think I wanted to be in this position? With you? With Curtis?’

  ‘Like I said, I had no idea you would become involved.’

  ‘It doesn’t even matter any more. What matters is that we find him. Can you help us or not?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dani. I honestly can’t help with that.’

  ‘Then what was the point of all this?’

  Ben pondered that for a few seconds. ‘I’m nothing like Curtis. You see me as some sort of monster; I can tell by the way you look at me, the way you talk to me. But I’m not. Curtis. He’s a monster.’

  ‘Yet you said he was never violent towards you, or anyone else here? So what do you mean?’

  ‘I could always tell what lay beneath. You must have found out his background by now? He’s had bloody voices in his head for years. He would sit on his bunk jabbering away like it was completely normal.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘Just crap. Nothing sinister, but he was seriously messed up. But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I always got the impression that before he was just talking to himself. If that makes sense.’

  ‘Not really. You said he was hearing voices?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what he told me. But when I listened to him talking, it was more like he was just chatting to different versions of himself. Like good conscience, bad conscience or something.’ He must have noticed the perplexed look on Dani’s face because his own expression turned sour. ‘Look, I’m not a bloody trained psychiatrist. I don’t know the ins and outs of these things or what any of it means. I’m just trying to explain what I saw and heard.’

  ‘That’s fine, I’m listening. I’m just trying to figure this out, same as you. You said that was what he was doing before, like there was a change?’

  ‘Yeah there was a change. Maybe again, it’s just the way I’m interpreting it, but… he started to talk to someone else.’

  ‘Someone else?’

  ‘Like not him. A real person. A she.’

  ‘A she?’

  ‘Are you a parrot or something?’

  ‘Something.’

  Ben tried to hold back a smile, Dani did too. This wasn’t a time for joking, and inside she admonished herself for even attempting it, especially here, with this man.

  ‘But he didn’t want her in his head,’ Ben said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well it was pretty damn obvious from what he said. “What are you doing here? Get out. Get out, you can’t be here. You can’t do this to me, go away.” That sort of crap. I mean, at first, a couple of times I really thought there was someone else in the room with us. Hearing that sort of thing in the night when it’s pitch-black, I even doubted myself a few times as to whether we were really alone. And he certainly thought we weren’t.’

  ‘Did she have a name?’

  ‘Fuck knows. I wasn’t e
ver about to try and join in the bloody conversation. Normally I’d shrink into my bed and hope he’d forget I was even here.’

  ‘You’re not messing with me?’

  ‘No, Dani, I’m not.’

  Dani thought about what Ben was saying. In truth, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her. Except Ben was sure there had been some sort of change in Curtis’s psychosis. But when exactly had that happened, and more importantly, what had caused it?

  Really though, when she thought about it, did any of this even help in any way? Unless Ben could help them find Curtis now, what was the point?

  ‘Seriously, Ben. Is this all you had?’ she said, sounding as unimpressed as she felt. ‘Your interpretation of a madman who talked to multiple people in his head?’

  Ben looked pissed off now.

  ‘Of course he’s batshit crazy,’ Dani said, sounding agitated and determined to push Ben’s buttons. ‘Look at what he’s doing! You’ve waited all this time, while people are getting slaughtered, and this is all I get? Some half-baked story about Curtis rambling to his alter ego. This is fucking pathetic.’

  Dani went to stand up.

  ‘You want more?’ Ben said, practically baring his teeth like a dog. He was angry. Inside, Dani was pleased. An angry Ben was far more likely to give up what he knew. ‘How about this? He killed them that night.’

  He looked pleased with himself now, though the anger was clearly still there.

  ‘Who?’ Dani said.

  ‘Who do you think? His girlfriend and her son.’

  ‘Yeah, and that’s why he was sent here. What’s your point?’

  ‘No. He was sent here for manslaughter. But he killed them.’

  ‘He crashed the car deliberately, you mean?’

  Now Ben looked impressed with himself. As though this was the moment he’d been waiting for.

  ‘No. The crash didn’t kill them. He did. He stepped from that mangled wreck and finished them both off with his hands.’

  ‘He told you this?’

  Ben nodded. ‘He was drunk and high that night. He was in a rage; he wanted them dead. That’s what he told me. Whether or not or how he was going to do it, who knows. But after the accident, he saw the opportunity.’

  ‘Jesus, Ben. You knew this and you held on to it?’

  ‘No. I offered it to you before. You refused.’

  ‘That’s not how it was.’

  ‘That’s how I saw it. And I’m telling you now because I realise you’d never come through for me. You couldn’t care less about me. But I’m doing the right thing.’

  Dani shook her head in disbelief. Though was it at Ben for his actions, or at what Ben was saying about Curtis?

  ‘But you still said it was an accident,’ Dani said. ‘So he hadn’t crashed deliberately to try to kill them?’

  ‘An accident, yeah. He was pushed off the road.’

  Dani’s brain whirred now as she tried to recall the details of the reports she’d read from that night.

  ‘There weren’t any other cars involved in the crash,’ she said.

  ‘He crashed headlong into a parked van,’ Ben said. ‘But it was the other car that caused it to happen.’

  ‘What other car? There was no other car.’

  Ben turned his palms over and shrugged. ‘I’m just telling you what he told me. The other car caused that crash, nothing to do with him. As far as he’s concerned, everything bad in his life stems from that moment. And he’s been waiting for his chance to get his revenge ever since.’

  Chapter Forty

  ‘Why don’t we get a psychiatrist to help us here?’ Easton said as they drove along the A435 back towards Birmingham. ‘Like… Cracker or whatever he was called?’

  Memories flashed in Dani’s mind at the mention of the name. She’d loved that TV series when she was younger. As teenagers she and Ben had sat watching it together on the sofa at home, back when life had been so simple. In fact she’d loved anything detective or mystery related, always trying to get one step ahead as the plot unfolded on screen or on the page. It perhaps explained why she’d been so bent on joining the police herself.

  She pushed the fond childhood memories away.

  ‘For what purpose?’ Dani said.

  ‘To figure out what the hell is going on with Curtis.’

  ‘Firstly, we don’t have access to Curtis.’

  ‘Not directly. But we have Dr Collins?’

  Dani thought about that one for a moment. Ben had talked about Curtis’s psychosis, the voices in his head.

  A thought struck her. Dani reached for her phone.

  ‘Dr Collins?’ she said when the doctor eventually answered, sounding a little flustered. Background noise suggested she was driving. ‘It’s DI Stephens again.’

  ‘Detective. Everything OK?’

  ‘Are you busy? We’d really like to speak with you again.’

  * * *

  Collins, sitting back in her office chair, once again looked put out by Dani and Easton’s presence. Was she like this with everyone? Perhaps it was because Collins saw Dani as her natural opponent, given that she continued to be part of Ben’s defence team.

  But was that all she was?

  ‘Curtis is psychotic, yes?’ Dani said.

  Collins frowned and fidgeted in her seat. ‘It depends; exactly what do you mean by that term?’

  ‘You’re the trained psychiatrist. You know what it means. He’s been suffering psychosis for years, right? Hearing voices. Communicating with voices.’

  Collins nodded. ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘So where do these voices come from?’

  Collins sighed and looked to Easton then back to Dani. ‘That’s such an open-ended question it’s almost impossible to answer.’

  ‘Pretend you’re on the witness stand,’ Easton said.

  ‘I’d say exactly what I just said.’

  ‘You can do better than that,’ Dani said.

  ‘If you were more specific, perhaps I could—’

  ‘Who is Curtis communicating with?’ Dani said. ‘In his head. You analysed him. So who are these people?’

  Collins sighed again. ‘To put it simply, they’re figments of his imagination.’

  ‘Does he take instruction from these people? Do they affect his behaviour?’

  ‘In a roundabout way, yes. In a legal sense, no.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning there’s a significant difference between psychosis, which Curtis exhibits, and dissociative identity disorder. Are you familiar with that?’

  ‘Humour us,’ Dani said.

  ‘Very well. The latter, or “split personalities” as you might have heard it referred to, is where a person exhibits multiple distinct personalities that inhabit the same body and mind but at different points. These distinct identities rarely, and sometimes never, communicate with each other. DID can lead to extreme cases because some of these personalities genuinely have no knowledge of the actions of the other. So what if one of the identities commits a crime? Who do you punish?’ Collins paused for a few moments as if to let her words sink in. ‘But regardless, that’s not Curtis at all. There is only one identity at the fore. His. All of his actions are carried out consciously by him. Yet it’s true that he might have felt compelled to act in a certain manner because of the voices he hears.’

  ‘Then what about this new voice?’ Easton said.

  Collins paused again. Her eyes narrowed.

  ‘What new voice?’

  ‘Ben told me there was a new voice,’ Dani said. ‘Curtis was talking to a woman, in his head. Someone he was battling with, who wasn’t there before.’

  Collins sighed. ‘There was more than one woman he heard. His mother was the loudest—’

  ‘No. Not his mother. I imagine she would have been long-standing, correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘I’m talking about someone new.’

  Collins sat back in her chair, a ponderous look on her face. ‘Yes, I think I
know who you mean. Curtis did mention her to me.’ Another pause. Another sigh, as though Collins was struggling to figure out how to explain it. Or just to figure out what she was prepared to tell. ‘Honestly, I know very little. You need to understand I never got to view footage of him in his cell on a day-to-day basis, so I rarely ever got to see him talking to any of these people for any length of time. I was only able to help him with what, who, he opened up to me about.’

  ‘But you’re saying he did talk to you about her,’ Easton said.

  ‘I was aware of her, yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I don’t know what to say. There’s no name. There’s no identity or personality as such. I already said this isn’t a case of DID. In reality, it’s little more than an echo. But I knew she, this new voice, was becoming more dominant, by which I mean he was hearing it more often, and that he personally didn’t like her.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘She aggravated him, put him down. There was nothing sinister about it, about her, though. At least no more than any of the other voices he’d heard for years.’

  ‘Could she have caused him to kill?’ Easton asked.

  Collins shook her head forcibly. ‘I really can’t say, I’ve not—’

  ‘Just a simple yes or no,’ Dani said. ‘Could this voice, or any of the other voices, have forced, coerced, or cajoled Curtis into killing?’

  ‘You’re asking for—’

  ‘I’m asking for a yes or no. That’s it.’

  ‘Yes! The answer is yes. Of course a voice in his head can have an influence on his actions, so yes.’

  ‘Do you believe that’s what’s happened here, with Curtis?’

  ‘I can’t answer that.’

  ‘I’m sure you could.’

  ‘But I’m not going to, based on the little direct evidence I have.’

  ‘Then how about this one. Again, a simple yes or no, then I promise we’ll get out of your hair. Is it possible that someone, a real person, introduced that voice into Curtis’s head?’

  The silence that followed seemed to go on for an age. Collins didn’t blink the whole time, her hard glare fixed on Dani.

  ‘Dr Collins?’