by Mosby, Steve
He is terribly afraid.
He does not want his brother to do this—wants to call out instead. But he is scared for John. Whatever he does, he is scared. Their father is insurmountable; they both know this. They do not confront him. They do not intervene. Even that does not guarantee their safety, but the opposite removes it entirely. They have to keep quiet. They have to hide and remain unnoticed for as long as possible.
Not do this.
‘The key,’ the policeman says. ‘What did John mean by that? The key to what?’
The boy looks at him. Looks him right in the eye.
What the policeman sees there is, surely, not derision. Because that would be impossible. There is no way this child is old and wise enough to be mocking him. Perhaps he is lying—that much is possible—but a little boy would be keen to hide his lies, anxious that someone might see through them, rather than revelling in the fact that someone has and they both know it.
The policeman realises he is touching the cross on his necklace—that it has come out from beneath his uniform and he is rubbing it anxiously between his fingers. He forces himself to tuck it away. This child is not evil. He isn’t. He has simply been through so much.
And yet …
‘The key to what, Andy?’ Sergeant Franklin says. ‘The key to what?’
And with that same expression on his face, the eight-year-old boy says, ‘The key to my father’s gun cabinet.’
DAY TEN
Forty-Two
‘HAVE WE MET BEFORE?’
I looked up from the coffee machine. I was in the lounge down the corridor from the operations room. It was a small room, with space for a sink unit and cabinets, the drinks dispenser I was standing by, and a couple of threadbare armchairs nobody ever had time to sit down in.
Franklin was standing in the doorway.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
He took a step into the room. ‘I’m sure we have. I’ve been thinking about it since I arrived, but haven’t had the chance to ask. And I’m sure. Where do I know you from?’
‘I guess I’ve got one of those faces.’
I did my best to shrug, half smile, and then, with my heart thudding hard in my chest, I turned back to the dispenser. Watched the hot water spitting and rasping into the thin plastic cup.
‘You’ve never worked in Buxton?’
‘Nope. Only ever here.’
Never worked in Buxton.
I grew up there though. My brother and me.
And yes, we have met before.
The coffee finally finished, I picked the cup out carefully, blowing the steam from the rim. Franklin was still standing there, still looking at me curiously, inquisitively. There was something about his body language that I didn’t like. It wasn’t cop-to-cop; it was more interrogatory than that, as though he’d decided that if he hadn’t encountered me as a colleague, then at some point he must have encountered me in a very different capacity.
Which of course he had.
The key to what, Andy?
The key to what?
I had changed, though. That was something to cling to. My surname was different now; my face and body had grown and altered. Only the thinnest ghost remained of the little boy he’d interrogated all those years ago—at least on the outside. And I remembered him so clearly because of the circumstances, and the impact he’d had on me, whereas his life since must have been littered with other similar incidents, his encounter with me lost and only half recalled amongst them.
I looked at him.
He hadn’t changed all that much from the policeman he’d been when he interviewed me all those years ago—back when I was eight years old. The brown hair might have silvered, but the face remained relatively unlined. The same bright blue eyes. I could see a thin chain around his neck, which I was willing to bet ended in the exact same crucifix I’d seen him touching as a young officer.
Faced with me.
This man, and the attitude he’d had towards me as a child, was responsible for so much of who I was. Evil. He’d thought I was evil. He hadn’t even made an attempt to hide it. I’d spent so much time denying that to myself—I wasn’t a bad person; there wasn’t anything intrinsically wrong with me; there was no evil—that the denial ran through me as deep as blood, and just as important.
But now, finally faced with him again, all that psychological armour was crumbling. I felt cold and small: powerless before the intimidating authority figure staring at me, accusing me with his eyes of being something monstrous. Do I know you? Yes, I know you. I know what you are. The time that had passed didn’t seem to matter any more. As I stood staring back at him, barely able to blink, I felt all the years I’d travelled, all the conviction I’d gathered, collapsing behind me like a bridge falling, the break rumbling towards me.
I opened my mouth to say … something. But nothing came out.
Then Franklin smiled at me. Shook his head.
‘Oh, I’m getting old.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I mean I’m not thinking straight.’ He half laughed, his manner changing instantly. ‘I’ve just realised—it will be from the television, won’t it? The press conferences. I remember seeing one of them. It must be from there.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s probably that.’
He leaned against the wall, visibly relaxing. My gaze followed him. The rest of my body didn’t move, aside from my heart, knocking hard against my lungs.
‘To be honest,’ he was saying, ‘I don’t know where I am at the moment. It’s this case, I think. It’s the worst one I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot.’ He looked at me. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-five.’
‘Really? You look younger. Well, trust me, Andy—by the time you get to my age, you’ll have seen far too much.’ His hand went to his chest, to the crucifix I imagined nestling beneath his shirt. My gaze followed it. ‘Far too much. And this … this is just evil, isn’t it. Pure evil.’
It wasn’t a question.
I said, ‘I don’t know if I believe in evil.’
‘Really? Wait a while.’ He lowered his hand and gave that half-laugh again. ‘Wait a while.’
I should have been prepared to argue; in my head, I’d been doing so ever since. But I found myself nodding slightly, entirely unequipped for this moment that had arrived. Franklin’s arrival had whipped off the flimsy film of self-deception, and now I just wanted away from this, not to engage in it, not to try to stand up to him.
‘It’s just this case, anyway.’ Franklin moved away from the wall again. ‘That’s what’s throwing me. Can’t think straight in the face of it.’
‘I get you. Believe me.’
He shook his head. ‘Just don’t tell anyone, will you?’
‘Don’t worry.’ I did my best to smile back. ‘I won’t.’
I needed some fresh air.
Taking my coffee with me, ignoring the way it scorched my fingertips, I headed for the lift and pressed the button for the ground floor. As it descended, I told myself:
He doesn’t recognise me.
As much as my defences had crumbled in the moment, I was already spinning the encounter. But still—it was true. The confrontation that had made such an impression on me, that had affected my whole life … he didn’t fucking remember it. He hadn’t looked at me and seen the evil little boy he had at the time, and he hadn’t recognised something wrong with me now. So regardless of anything else, I was not that child any more. I was no longer what Franklin had thought I was all those years ago. If I ever had been at all.
That was what I’d been afraid of all these years. That was what I’d expected to face when Franklin joined the investigation. And it hadn’t happened. What I felt now was almost relief, except that word wasn’t strong enough. It was euphoria. I was still trembling slightly, but now there was so much energy coursing through me it felt like I could bounce on the spot. It felt like I could do anything at all.
Catch this fucker.
Yes, that w
as what remained. Catch him. End this. And we would. As the lift hit the ground floor, I smiled to myself, and took a sip of the coffee without thinking. The heat sang in my upper lip, but I barely even noticed.
Ting.
I stepped out and headed through the foyer, past the reception, towards the sliding glass doors that led outside. It was sunny out there today. No storm clouds gathering; even the ones in my head were clearing. Free, free, free. There was a woman at the reception desk, but I was so distracted that I barely caught what she was saying as I walked behind her.
‘My husband.’ She was clearly frustrated, obviously repeating what she had already told the duty officer. The doors slid open in front of me just as she said, ‘Gregor Levchenko.’
A moment later, as I was still frozen in place, the glass doors slid closed again in front of me.
And then I turned slowly back.
Forty-Three
IT IS TIME, THE General thinks, to end this.
Standing in his office, wearing his uniform, he keeps his back to the dreaded thing in the corner and focuses on the computer screen in front of him. He watches the videos, one by one, moving only to change CDs as each clip comes to an end. One by one, he places the discs in a growing pile on the desk.
The murder of Vicki Gibson: haphazard and hand-held, camera held so close that blood spatters the lens. He was still learning at that point.
Derek Evans. Murdered the same night, but far more carefully. The camera is balanced on a wall before the homeless man is approached and beaten.
Sandra Peacock, John Kramer and Marion Collins. All die in much the same way: the only thing that changes in the footage is the addition of one and then two bodies beside the dying victim.
Kate Barrett. This one is more hurried—a mistake. Her husband is audible in the background, shouting in distress, and the clip ends raggedly, the road juddering as he runs.
Paul Thatcher. The video begins with him already lying on the woodland floor, mouth gaping, one half of his head bright red. Even with the interruption halfway through, the torture shown is prolonged, and Thatcher takes an age to die. Again, he is learning.
Marie Wilkinson. The clip begins with the pregnant woman already subdued, this time on her kitchen floor. She is struck several times in the face. There are inaudible words from outside of the frame. The camera remains focused on the dying woman on the floor as the intruding old man is beaten to death out of shot.
Seven more victims killed in the same woodland location in similarly abhorrent ways. None of them have been identified in the media yet, so he has no way of knowing their names. Not that it matters to him.
Sixteen murders, including the old man, and the code is unbroken.
It is enough. So, yes. It is time to stop this.
The General walks into the bathroom and takes one last look at himself in the mirror, wearing his father’s army uniform. He never earned one of his own, much as he tried, but he has done his best since to honour his father’s memory and make him proud. To become the kind of man he would have wanted as a son. He remembers the sequences he used to create as a child, all of which the old man broke. And so yes, in some sense, there is that too. Honour, become … and beat.
As he looks at himself, another memory of his father surfaces. Not telling stories at the dinner table, but at a later date: the man hopelessly drunk, lost, his wife—the General’s mother—long gone. In the memory, the old man is wearing this same uniform, and he has a pistol in his hand.
I’m a soldier, his father says. Although the General is standing directly behind him, talking to him, he knows the old man is speaking to himself. His father looks down at the weapon in his hand with something close to bewilderment. As though the weight is a surprise to him. The gun weighs more than the buttons pressed and stories told; it has a tangible real-life heft. It demands to be held and carried.
I’m a soldier, his father repeats, slurring the words.
So I should be able to do this.
The General shakes his head, chasing the memory away—and the memory of what came later.
Dear Sir,
We reject your application on the basis …
No. He won’t think about that.
Instead, he changes his clothes and gathers together the items he needs, trying to concentrate on the positives. The code was not broken! The other things that have gone wrong are not his fault—just dumb luck and misfortune, which can happen to anyone. Any soldier can stumble, especially in an operation as complex as this one. But the police never came close to breaking his code and catching him. And that is something. His father would surely be proud of that much.
The General shrugs on a coat, ignoring the horrific thing in the corner of the room behind him, and tries to tell himself all of this.
When he is ready to leave, he slips a rubber band carefully around the pile of CDs and places the bundle in his jacket pocket. Outside the house, he steers his car into the morning traffic and joins the loop road, heading towards the town centre, trying to keep the anger he feels under control.
Time to end this.
He heads for the train station.
Forty-Four
BACK UPSTAIRS IN THE operations room, I phoned the warehouse to verify that Levchenko had indeed got that far and collected his order, then spent a few minutes studying my road map.
The place was north-east of the city, out in the sticks. His house was in the countryside too, but closer in. The area between was within our potential search area and had, according, to the reports already been visited. That didn’t mean something hadn’t been missed.
Okay. Making the assumption that Levchenko wouldn’t have taken some crazy route, I drew a vertical eye shape on the map, with his house and the warehouse at the corners. Looking at the space in between, I could see two likely networks of roads he might have cycled along.
‘What are you doing?’ Laura said, putting a coffee down.
‘I’m thinking.’
She peered at the map.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Missing-persons report. This is where he was last seen; this is where he was going.’
I rubbed my jaw. It would take me half an hour each way, starting from his house and heading to the warehouse along one set of roads, then back again down the other. Levchenko hadn’t been missing that long in the grand scheme of things, and I wasn’t convinced anything had happened to him. But it was too … coincidental.
The birthday puzzle came back to me. Just because I had a connection to the guy didn’t mean anything. Sooner or later, by the law of averages, those kinds of connection would arise. It probably didn’t mean anything at all. Like Franklin’s involvement, it was just the past intruding by chance.
‘Andy?’
‘We’ve already searched most of this area,’ I said. ‘It’s probably nothing.’
‘Right. So … what?’
I didn’t say anything. I could still picture him. Levchenko. From memory, he was a good man—not the sort to stay out and worry his wife. And then, of course, I remembered Emmeline. A black-and-white image. A face with one eye bruised shut.
I stood up. ‘I’ll go.’
‘You sure?’ Laura shook her head. ‘Hang on. What’s going on, Hicks?’
‘The woman,’ I said. ‘We’ve met before. Or rather, I’ve met her husband before. Look, it doesn’t really matter. But I’ll just check it out. It’s probably nothing, but I’ll check it out anyway, just to be sure.’
‘O-kay.’ Laura spread the word out, looking at me.
You’re being weird here, Hicks.
‘Because I owe it to them,’ I said.
I owe it to them.
Eight years ago, Gregor Levchenko had come to me asking for help, and I’d failed him. Failed him and his wife and—most of all—his daughter, Emmeline.
At the time, she was living with a man called John Doherty, who had attacked her. I’d told her father the truth: that if she wasn’t prepared to co-operat
e with us, there wasn’t a whole lot we’d be able to do. Two days later, Doherty had beaten Emmeline Levchenko to death.
Because of me.
Because I failed to do my job and protect her.
On the way to the long, winding Hawthorne Road on the outskirts of town, I drove past Gregor Levchenko’s house and found myself stopping outside.
It was two up, two down, with windows like black eyes. Little more than a shack: a patched-together cube of brickwork and corrugated iron. The land around it was hard-scrabble: dust and dirt and miserable clutches of yellowing grass. Chickens from the property next door pecked at the gravel.
It looked like a place where nobody lived any more, but they did, the pair of them. And this was where Emmeline had grown up. They had been a decent, hard-working family who had never expected anything more from life than that the people who were supposed to look after and protect them would do so. It wasn’t so much to ask. It shouldn’t have been.
I owed them, all right.
And there was that sense again—stronger than ever—of being entangled. Of chains of cause and effect I could only glimpse brief links in, but which held taut out of sight. The sense that what was happening now was, at least in part, the present unable to keep the secrets of the past.
Everything unfolds.
Forty-Five
I DROVE NORTH-EAST, UNSURE what I was looking for. The roads were quiet out here: a fringe hemming the top corner of the city, spreading out towards occasional factories and isolated properties but little else.
The land was half wild. For much of my journey, the road cut through woodland: walls of trees on either side, the branches sometimes meeting overhead, so that I passed through natural, leaf-lit tunnels filled with midges. The morning sun mottled everything. Where the trees cleared, it created bright expanses of shimmering tarmac. More than once, I saw deer darting between the trees parallel to the road, little more than shadows that resolved into animal shapes in my mind only after they had vanished.
I kept the window rolled down, my elbow on the sill, listening to the clicks of the undergrowth and the trill of birdsong.