by Mark Roberts
‘Any questions?’ Silence. ‘Want to know what our girl sounds like?’
Clay maxed the volume on her iPhone and played back the recording from the switchboard.
A television played in the background.
‘Hello, police, where are you calling from?’
The sound of tears that Clay now knew came from the television set.
‘I can see from my display that you’re calling from landline number 496 7370.’
A door closed and the sound of the TV died.
‘I’m calling from 699 Mather Avenue,’ said the killer.
‘What’s the nature of your problem?’
‘A man has been murdered and his wife has been tortured. Tell Eve Clay to get over here as fast as she can – 699 Mather Avenue.’
The dead tone.
‘Male or female?’ she asked the room.
‘Absolutely can’t tell,’ replied Detective Constable Clive Winters. ‘Whoever’s putting that voice on has got it dead centre between the genders.’
‘There’s absolutely no doubt now that these crimes are the work of a woman, a Vindici copycat. Frances Jamieson’s dying words were, It was a woman, just one woman. And judging by the cold calm with which she’s dishing out these punishment killings, I’m sure we’re dealing with a top-drawer psychopath who worships a mass murderer. She idolises Justin Truman, Vindici. Barney?’
‘Thank you, Eve.’ He pointed to the SmartBoard. ‘This is Justin Truman. Anyone not receive this image?’ Silence. ‘He’s older. He hasn’t had any cosmetic surgery to his face. He’s put on a little weight and he’s changed the colour and cut of his hair but, yes, this is definitely Justin Truman.’
He clicked his handset and showed the zoomed-in image of Truman’s eyes from the Day of the Dead picture. ‘Look!’ He clicked again and showed one detail, the same pair of eyes from his Metropolitan Police mugshot.
Cole returned to first picture, the whole image of Justin-Truman-in-the-sun.
‘When I received that phone call, just after David Wilson was murdered, Truman asked me if I’d like him to send me a picture via a third party,’ said Clay. ‘I believe this is it. He’s setting up a link between us and the killer and that link is him.’
‘Do we know exactly where was it taken?’ asked Gina Riley.
Clay looked at her, noting the small and fleeting smile at the corners of Gina’s mouth, the one she wore when she saw a handsome man.
Cole replied, ‘Based on the origin of the Weeping Child pottery left at both scenes, I’m going to say Puebla City in the state of Puebla at a Day of the Dead festival. You’ve got to hand it to the guy. He escapes from a prison convoy in the middle of nowhere between Strangeways and H.M.P. Wakefield with nothing other than the clothes he’s wearing and manages to make it to another continent.’
‘He didn’t get to Mexico all by himself. He can’t have done,’ said Clay. ‘We need to speak to whoever paid for his barrister and that crack legal team he had behind him at the Old Bailey. After we’re done here, Karl...’
‘I’ll start tracking down old money bags,’ said Stone.
‘Here’s a set of links,’ said Clay. ‘Whoever bankrolled Truman’s legal team and helped him escape the country is either with him or is in direct contact with him. My money says Truman’s pulling the strings with the copycat and is in touch with her. Whoever’s running the Vindici website on which the photograph was published is either the killer or is in touch with her.’
‘Any more pictures, different ones?’ asked Hendricks.
Cole clicked and a picture of a skeletal bride and groom came onscreen, she in white dress and veil with a bright bouquet of dahlias in the bones of her fingers, he in tails with a top hat perched on his skull. Beneath their bare feet was a written caption: The Day of the Dead.
‘The Day of the Dead isn’t a single-day festival, it’s a series of days between October and November and it’s the most important festival in the calendar to most Mexicans. We’re within the time window now. It happens every year. People spend quality time off with their families and celebrate the lives of their mutual loved ones who’ve died.’ Cole indicated the skeletal bride and groom and clicked back to Justin-Truman-in-the-sun.
‘What does that tell us about Justin Truman?’ Clay heard herself speak her thought out loud, saw every face turn towards her. ‘He’s gone back to Mexico and orchestrated the publication of this specific image. He’s got Mexican ancestry or some very strong connection...’
For a moment, his eyes seemed to fill the screen, obscuring all other details, and Clay wondered if she was suffering the beginning phase of a vicious sleep-disordered illness. The moment passed but she felt his eyes sear the surface of her brain like a branding iron.
‘OK,’ said Clay. ‘I need someone who’s savvy on Ancestry UK to look up Truman’s family tree.’
Cole raised a hand. ‘I can do that. Should be straightforward. Truman’s an unusual name.’
‘How can we be absolutely certain that he’s not back in this country?’ asked Stone. ‘He managed to escape the country – maybe he’s made it back here.’
‘The newspaper in his hand.’ On the SmartBoard, Clay returned to the image of Vindici in the carnival procession and zoomed in on the newspaper. ‘He’s pointing his index finger at the date, the fourteenth of October 2019. Last week, the day David Wilson was murdered. The newspaper he’s holding, the Mexico Star, is a national newspaper, so doesn’t do anything to pinpoint his location. It doesn’t make it absolutely certain he’s in Mexico, or that he’s not here. But if I was him,’ she said, ‘would I take the chance and leave the safety of Mexico to come back here? Not a chance. The festival dates bookended Vindici’s killing sprees. Today’s Thursday the twenty-fourth of October. That gives our copycat until Sunday the third of November, ten more days to pick off more paedophiles. Is she going to do it again? Yes. She’s gathered the body parts for the next excursion.’
‘Should we give a shite?’
Clay’s eyes tracked to Detective Constable Bob Rimmer. Father of three children under ten years and with a wife in the latter stages of terminal lung and spine cancer. She looked at him, smiled to disguise the dark uncertainty inside her.
‘Sorry, Eve, my youngest had me up all night and it just kind of slipped out.’ Tall, thin and normally tight-lipped, Rimmer had dropped four stone since his wife’s diagnosis.
‘No problem, Bob. You’re probably not the only person in the room who’s thinking exactly the same thing. But we have to give a shite.’ She turned to Hendricks. ‘Anything from the autopsy on Steven Jamieson?’
‘Yes. When Dr Lamb opened his skull his brain was carved to shreds. He must have died in intense agony.’
Clay looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Gina Riley’s got a lovely job for all of you.’
Riley waved a collection of papers in the air. ‘These are the names of all the registered paedophiles on Merseyside. We’re going to visit the most serious offenders, warn them to be vigilant but squeeze them for any information they can come up with in relation to Wilson and Jamieson. Uniformed constables are going to be given a bunch of people to visit. If any of them come up with something interesting, bring them in for further questioning. You’re going to oversee the constables and wade in if any of the paedophiles say anything useful to the uniforms. I’m the anchor on this. All informational roads lead back to me. Gather round.’
Clay headed for the door, and was compelled to glance back at the image of Justin Truman smiling in the sun.
‘Time to go home, Eve,’ said Hendricks.
Clay reached into her bag, took a twenty- and a ten-pound note and handed it to Hendricks.
‘What’s this for?’
‘Can you do me another favour, Bill? Call a florist and send some flowers to Bob Rimmer’s wife.’
She looked at the team, saw Rimmer waiting for his brief from Riley with a look of astonishing fatigue and sadness.
‘Bob, how about you and me s
upervising the door-to-door on Mather Avenue?’ said Riley. A look of relief passed across his face as she addressed the rest of the team. ‘I’ve highlighted the list of heavyweight paedos. If your name’s next to them, then you talk to them directly. Call me when you’re done with your first batch and I’ll give you more names and addresses.’
Clay hurried to the door and once she was on the corridor leading to the lift began to run, wishing she had the power to magic herself through time and space and earn just a little bit more time with her husband and son.
36
7.30 am
As Clay put the key into the front door of her house on Mersey Road, two things happened in the same moment. She heard Philip banging on the living room window but inside her head she felt Vindici’s smiling eyes sinking deeper within her and forming an indelible memory that was both alien but also strangely familiar.
Go away! she thought and slammed a door shut in her brain.
She pressed her face close to the window and said, ‘Whatever you do, Philip, don’t poke me in the eye!’
He jabbed his index finger at the glass and she reeled back, clutching at her eye, listening to her son scream with laughter. As she carried on the drama, she heard the door open and her husband Thomas’s fake anger, ‘Philip! What have I told you about poking your mother in the eye?’
As Clay stepped into the house, Philip ran into the hall and straight towards her. Clay dropped to her knees and opened up her body for a hug. Dressed in Superman pyjamas and with his hair full of pillow dents, he threw his arms around her shoulders and her fatigue evaporated.
With her hands on his back, she felt the slenderness of his young body, the fragility of his growing bones, and heard Philomena’s voice inside her mind, as clearly as if the nun was there in the hall next to her.
‘Jesus said, “And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”’
She kissed her son on the cheek and then gazed at his face: the features that came from her husband – his eyes and nose – and the accents that came from her – the way he smiled, the shape of his eyebrows – and the mystery that was his mouth, lips that had skipped a generation and, she guessed, came from either her mother or father, people she had never known.
‘How can who what, Mummy?’ asked Philip, looking at her as if she was the only woman in the world.
She frowned slightly and looked up at Thomas, standing over them.
‘You just said, How can they do it to them?’
She connected with the thought that had steamrollered through her head when she first hugged Philip.
‘Oh...’ She thought on her feet. ‘How can some people be nasty to other people? Just a thought.’
She stood up and, hooking her hands under Philip’s armpits, lifted him up. ‘Have you been eating rocks?’ she asked. ‘You are so big and strong and heavy.’
As she carried him into the morning room at the back of the house, she saw the two of them in the large mirror on the back wall of the hall. The total trust in Philip’s face filled her with a tenderness that was the direct opposite to the hard-boiled grit that she had dug into on every step of her current investigation. It felt good to be normal and filled with light.
As quickly as tiredness had vanished, in the lifting and carrying of her son it returned and, carefully, she put Philip on his feet and sat in the armchair nearest the door. Then she lifted Philip again and sat him on her knee as Thomas disappeared into the kitchen.
Flattening Philip’s hair down, she heard the welcoming click of a kettle being switched on and bread sinking down into the toaster, and wished she didn’t have to leave so soon.
At the kitchen door, Thomas said, ‘You’ll never guess what Philip can do all by himself with no help from anyone?’
She pulled a puzzled face at her son and he beamed with pride as he slid from her knee.
‘Go on?’ said Clay.
‘He can get dressed and comb his own hair all by himself in his bedroom.’
‘Oh no, he can’t!’ said Clay to her husband.
‘Oh yes I can, Mother!’
Mother, the name he gave her when he knew he was in the right.
‘No you can’t.’ She looked at him, milking the drama.
‘Mother, I can and I will and I will show you!’
A one-child stampede through the hall and up the stairs to his bedroom began.
‘I wish I had one iota of that lad’s energy,’ said Clay, stifling a yawn.
‘Sleeping regularly would help,’ said Thomas, coming towards her. ‘Let me have a look at you.’ He crouched in front of her.
‘Do I need to take my clothes off, Dr Thomas?’
He smiled. ‘Stop it!’ Looking into her eyes, she saw concern line his face.
‘What’s up, Doc?’
‘You’ve got kinks in the blood vessels in your eyes I haven’t seen before. It looks to me like your blood pressure’s going through the roof. I’ll go and get—’
‘Don’t get your bag, Thomas, please. I’m on the minutes here.’
In the kitchen, the kettle throbbed, and in his bedroom above the morning room, Philip threw himself head first into the process of getting dressed independently for nursery.
She glanced down at her clothes, the Motörhead T-shirt, jeans and Converses she had exchanged for the formal clothes she had worn at Wilson’s cremation and then the scene of the murder in Mather Avenue.
‘You don’t look yourself, Eve. That’s not a medical judgement, that’s me talking to my wife.’
‘I had to lift Steven Jamieson from the bed on which he was murdered into the body bag. When I went to the mortuary, I virtually boiled my hands under the hot tap. I feel terrible. A part of me wishes I’d never become a police officer.’ In the kitchen the kettle clicked off and she saw the conflict in her husband’s face. Stay or go? ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea, Thomas.’
As he headed to the kitchen the noise from upstairs died down.
‘Any more nightmares?’ she asked.
‘He was fine after he’d spoken to you. It was like you’d woven a magical spell over him. All the anxiety he displayed when he first woke up just disappeared.’
Philip jumped down the stairs singing and she heard the pride in his improvised song.
‘Did you get my memory box down from the loft, Thomas?’
‘I did. It’s in the front room. I had a look through before I turned in for the night. Listen, Eve, I don’t want any arguments with you. You don’t make unnecessary or trivial demands and you’re massively short on time. I’ll take Philip to the nursery while you go through the box to find whatever it is that’s bothering you.’
Into the silence, she whispered, ‘Thank you.’ The door burst open and Philip strode into the room, stopped in front of his mother and stood to attention.
She sat up and looked at Philip with amazement and pride. Dressed in blue jeans, a black jumper and trainers strapped at the side with Velcro, his hair was combed through, flattened and neat. He smiled at her and displayed a set of small, perfectly polished teeth.
‘I told you I can, Mother!’
She stroked his face and smiled. ‘You are turning into a very big boy.’
With the words came the certainty that just as one day he dressed himself, another day would come when he would leave home.
She looked at Thomas. The skills needed to self-dress had been imparted largely by her husband and she was filled with a deepening sense of loss. ‘You’ve done very well, both of you.’
As Philip walked to his father he held out his hand and said, ‘Come on, Dad, I want to go to nursery. I want to see my friends Luke and Eleanor.’
‘I’ll walk you to the door and wave you off,’ said Clay with all the false brightness she could muster.
*
Thom
as pulled his Nissan Micra away from the pavement and Philip turned his face to the passenger window, waved at his mother and called, ‘Love you, Mummy!’
‘Love you more!’
Within seconds, they were gone.
Clay closed the front door and turned into the hallway. She saw herself in the mirror again and was shocked at her reflection, as if she had seen her own ghost haunting her. She leaned back against the door for support against the lightness that filled her head and the fresh wave of emptiness that filled her core.
You’ve done it all wrong! The words ricocheted between the plates of her skull and echoed... wrong... wrong... wrong... wrong...
37
7.40 am
Clay sat on the sofa in the living room of her home in Mersey Road with her memory box at her feet and the rumble of traffic along Aigburth Road prompting her to check her watch, reminding her that the present was screaming for her attention.
She lifted the black lid of the plastic stacker box and, as she took out four large brown envelopes stuffed with photographs going back forty years, saw the edge of the thing she was looking for at the bottom of the box. Bypassing the box of letters and the collection of birthday cards, she took out the scrapbook that she’d started as a teenager and, looking at the handwriting on the cover, made a connection with the thirteen-year-old girl she had once been.
St Michael’s Catholic Care Home for Children.
She opened the scrapbook, the smell of old newspapers filling her nose and throat, and looked at the first newspaper article she had carefully cut out and pasted into the book.
Smiling, she read the headline and recalled how as an adolescent she had decided to keep a record of the achievements of her all surrogate brothers and sisters in the home.
Clay scanned the words of the article but had no need to read it as she remembered the pride she’d felt when Eric Joyce, a boy three years her senior, had left the home and signed as a professional footballer for Everton.
Move on, move on, she urged herself, flicking through the book for the one piece she needed to look at.