Day of the Dead: A gripping serial killer thriller (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  He opened the front door and heard her coming down the stairs.

  ‘Karl, I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?’

  Stone walked to his car.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  He walked faster as she followed him down the pavement.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  He got inside his car and turned on the ignition.

  She pounded the roof of his car with the heels of both hands.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  He pulled away, looked at Samantha Wilson’s reflection in the wing mirror.

  ‘What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong?’ she screamed.

  115

  6.04 am

  In Lucien Burns’s double lock-up garage at the Woolton Village end of Menlove Avenue, DCI Eve Clay turned a full circle for the fourth time, taking in each and every detail. She stopped and focused on the female mannequins, one made masculine with a perfectly formed wooden phallus strapped to its groin.

  ‘Is this your work?’ Clay asked. She pressed record on her iPhone.

  Handcuffed to Hendricks, and just beyond the scene of crime outside the garage, Christine nodded. ‘I’m good with my hands. I’m good with making things out of wood.’

  ‘Did Lucien ask you to make it, the phallus?’

  ‘Yes. Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘This is quite a place,’ said Clay. ‘Talk me through it.’

  There was a softness about Christine now that was the direct opposite of the hard-nosed fishwife she’d portrayed herself as earlier.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Christine, but is this the real you? This calm, quiet woman?’

  ‘I’ve had to construct acts to protect myself since I was a little girl. I don’t like the woman who shouts and swears and insults people at the drop of a hat. But I need her. I despise the woman who hands out hate leaflets, making people cross one of the busiest roads in Liverpool to avoid her, so that they don’t have to breathe the same air as her. But I need her. The racist woman is a necessary embarrassment. It alienates people. Nobody comes near me. Nobody wants me. Nobody needs me. Nobody touches me. I need her.’

  ‘What about Lucien?’

  ‘He doesn’t love me. Why should he? He doesn’t see me. I don’t see him. We’ve communicated through Annabelle for years. It’s only been in recent months that we’ve been in direct contact.’

  ‘How do you feel about him?’

  ‘I’m his mother. I gave birth to him when I was fourteen. I love him. But he’s a constant reminder of his father who I hated. My child is like a ghost of his father. Lucien blames me for giving birth to him, for making him the way he is. Neither one thing nor another, as he so often says. I’m torn, constantly torn.’

  ‘He told us that you tidied up after him, that you were going to take the fall for his crimes.’

  ‘That’s how I hoped I could earn his love. By helping him to destroy his father and expose his father’s wife. By working together to annihilate the Human Abomination and his Slut Wife.’

  ‘You’d have framed yourself, Christine.’

  ‘If I went to jail in his place, I hoped he’d come and visit me. It was a risk, a dangerous one, but I took it in the hope we’d get away with it. In playing my part in destroying the Human Abomination, I was destroying the thing that was haunting me. And there was something I wanted so badly. A new start for me and him in a world where the Human Abomination no longer existed.’

  ‘So it was your idea to kill Steven Jamieson?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Yes, it was my idea.’

  ‘I don’t believe you, Christine. Lucien’s told me it was his idea. He told me that he asked you to set up a Vindici website. He told me that he put the copycat killing plan to you and that he was going to go it alone but you came back and said you could help. Lucien said that his response was to tell you Vindici acted alone but you reminded him that Justin Truman had the help and support of Justine Weir. You would be like his Justine Weir. Not rich and powerful like her, but you’d do what you could to assist him, like taking the blame for his crimes and providing him with everything and anything he needed.’

  Christine’s head dropped.

  ‘Do you provide everything in this lock-up garage, Christine?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Like I asked earlier: talk me through it.’

  ‘It’s much the opposite of every message Lucien sends out to the world. I’ve realised that in the months since we started communicating. The things in his rooms in Annabelle’s house are a reflection of the way he wants the world to see him. A series of ordinary straight lines. The garage is what he really is. A kaleidoscope of contradictions. I asked him to allow me into that place where the contradictions lie so that I could hide pieces of me alongside him. And he did.’

  She indicated the filing cabinet. ‘There’s a drawer full of me. Have a look, DCI Clay.’

  Clay walked to the top drawer of the filing cabinet and started looking from the front. Plastic wallets containing bank statements, payments from Campbell’s office to a company called APL Ltd, a confidentiality agreement but no paperwork from Dr Warner.

  Clay took out the confidentiality agreement and saw that Jamieson had agreed to pay £3,000 per month for eighteen years for Christine’s silence.

  ‘Clearly, I didn’t have the abortion. Do you know what he said to me when I told him I was pregnant? That he was happy. That he loved me. That of all the girls he’d ever met, I was the only one he loved. That his wife couldn’t have children and he was overjoyed that I was pregnant. That we could run away and make a life together. He started making plans through Campbell. His wife found out through a spy in Campbell’s camp. She threatened to have me murdered. When I gave birth to Lucien, Jamieson gave me money and told me to escape. I came to Liverpool.’

  ‘Why Liverpool?’ asked Clay.

  Christine shook her head. ‘Why not?’

  Clay pulled a slender black photograph album from the filing cabinet and opened it at the first page. There was a large colour picture of Christine, aged fourteen, holding a sleeping Lucien in her arms. She smiled with her mouth but her eyes were filled with terror and confusion.

  ‘I don’t understand Annabelle’s part in this,’ said Clay.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Christine.

  ‘Why didn’t she intervene? Or did she know all along and turned a blind eye?’

  ‘She didn’t know all along. But when she found out, when I became pregnant, it was all too late. When she confronted Steven and Frances, Frances turned around and threatened her, said that she had known all along and that she’d approved of the relationship. They’d given her generous financial gifts at a time when she was down on her luck. It was her word against that of Steven and Frances. If she tried to drag Steven down, they would all go down together. Frances said, He paid you for your daughter’s services and you took the money with both hands.’

  Christine’s eyes drilled into Clay and she felt the weight of twenty overburdened years pressing down on her from the muddy light in the woman’s gaze.

  ‘What are you thinking, DCI Clay?’

  I think Annabelle should have taken her chances and gone to the police, she thought.

  ‘I think this is one of the saddest things I’ve ever known,’ she said.

  116

  6.45 am

  Clay looked through the observation slot of Jimmy’s cell and saw him lying on the bed, both hands pressed to the left of his abdomen beneath the pale blue blanket wrapped around him.

  For a few moments, she thought she could hear muffled Christmas music filtering through the walls of the building, and the sight of him lying on the bed sent her back to her first Christmas Day in St Michael’s Catholic Care Home for Children, the first Christmas after Sister Philomena died.

  She closed her eyes and remembered the crack in the ceiling above her bed and how she felt unable to get out of bed, incapable of moving, such was the
weight of her sorrow.

  There was a smell of Christmas dinner outside her bedroom and a knocking on the door.

  ‘Can I come in, Eve?’

  She checked her face for tears and wiped them away with the sleeve of her pyjama top.

  ‘Come in, Jimmy.’

  As Jimmy crossed the room, she sat up in bed. She felt dizzy as he sat at the bottom of her bed.

  ‘Seeing as you won’t come down for your Christmas dinner, I’ve brought it up to you.’

  She looked at the tray between them, saw two plates full of food, knives and forks and two crackers.

  ‘You’ve been looking forward to this dinner for weeks, Eve.’

  ‘I’m not – I just can’t, Jimmy.’

  ‘Well, if you’re not eating yours, I’m not eating mine.’

  She looked at him and a thousand words collided inside her head but all she could do was stare at him. He picked up a cracker and held it out to her.

  ‘You can pull a cracker with me, surely to God, Eve.’

  She felt a thin line of light weave through the darkness as her hand extended and she gripped the cracker.

  ‘Before we pull this cracker, I want to promise you something and I want to ask you a question. Deal?’

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘I promise you if you have something to eat, you’ll start to feel a little bit better. It’s something to do with your blood and your sugars or some such stuff I did in a science lesson in school...’

  ‘What do you want to ask me?’

  He pointed at the empty space between them. ‘If Sister Philomena was sitting right there, on your bed, now, what would she say to you?’

  ‘Eat your dinner and have the best Christmas Day ever.’

  ‘If you eat your dinner, Eve, and I eat my dinner, then guess what we can do when we’ve finished?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All the other kids have opened their presents.’

  ‘I can go downstairs and open my presents?’

  ‘No, Eve. We can go downstairs and open our presents.’

  ‘You haven’t opened your presents yet, Jimmy?’

  The narrow light inside her flooded.

  ‘Let’s pull the cracker.’

  She felt no resistance on his side and the body of the cracker came towards her, the plastic toy, joke and hat falling on her legs.

  ‘Eve, do you think for one second that I would open my presents without you being there? Do you think I would or could celebrate Christmas without you?’

  Jimmy lifted a plate of Christmas dinner from the tray and slid the tray up the bed towards her. She picked up the knife and fork from the tray as he balanced his plate on his lap.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Jimmy.’

  ‘Well. If we were in France, I believe it’d be bon happy tit!’

  A volley of laughter escaped through her nose. She looked at him and was filled with the sense that Sister Philomena was somehow close and looking down on her.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Eve.’

  ‘Happy Christmas, Jimmy.’

  ‘Tuck in, kid. Food now. Presents next...’

  *

  Clay knocked on the cell door. Jimmy didn’t move or look but he spoke softly: ‘Is that you, Eve?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  Slowly, he sat up, looked at the door and smiled.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘I asked for you to come and see me.’

  She looked at Sergeant Harris and he handed her the key.

  Clay opened the door, and butterflies flapped inside her as Harris’s footsteps retreated down the corridor.

  ‘Come and sit beside me, Eve.’

  They sat in silence for what could have been a minute, an hour, a month.

  She felt the weight of his left hand between her shoulders and he stroked her spine.

  ‘Go for the treatment. Go for the chemotherapy.’

  ‘No. No thank you.’

  ‘Maybe the doctors here can find a way.’

  ‘I went to some superstar cancer experts in Florida and California, the big buck boyos. There’s nothing left for me, kid.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can say or do to make you change your mind?’

  Silence was his answer.

  ‘I’m sorry I put you through that tonight in the Littlewoods Building.’

  Even though the smell of the Littlewoods Building was still fresh on her skin, her visit there seemed to have happened years ago, as if time was collapsing and the order of events far and near was turning upside down.

  ‘I know a lot of things about you, about how you turned out. But it’s been thirty-three years since we’ve been together face to face. I knew you’d married, I knew you’d become a mother, I knew about all the cases you’d worked on and the people you’d brought to justice. But I didn’t know if you were the extension of the girl I left behind at St Michael’s or whether you’d been warped by experience and time into a different version of you.’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that,’ she replied. ‘I’m not the best judge of me.’

  ‘I didn’t come back to judge you, love.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that...’

  ‘You showed yourself to be everything I hoped you’d be, everything I’d dreamed of, the Eve I was forced to leave behind, only older and more experienced. Not many would have done what you did tonight and no one, no one, would have blamed you for abandoning him.’

  His hand stilled on her back.

  ‘What’s your greatest achievement, Eve?’

  ‘My son. Did you ever have children?’

  ‘The world’s too dangerous a place for children.’

  ‘What’s your greatest achievement?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Intervening that day and saving you? Who knows? But you are who you are, and I hope I’m a part of your success, that I made a difference.’

  He looked at her and years slipped away from his face.

  ‘Christopher Haw—’

  ‘Don’t even mention the bastard’s name in my presence.’

  Clay laughed.

  ‘Like Sister Philomena,’ said Jimmy. ‘She took risks to battle evil so good would triumph. You do likewise, as a matter of course. I’m so glad I came back.’

  ‘Even though you’re going to spend the time you have left in a cell when you could be enjoying your final days in Mexico?’

  ‘There’s only so much sunshine one man can take, Eve. Only so many fancy cocktails... Yeah, you’re right, get me out of here and on the next plane back.’

  As he looked into space, the smile dissolved from his face but not from his eyes.

  ‘Happiness isn’t where you are or what you’re doing. It’s who you’re with. And I simply couldn’t be happier than I am at this moment. As soon as I was diagnosed, I knew I’d have to take my chances and come back to Liverpool. The thought of dying was one thing, and I could take that. The thought of dying without seeing you again or getting the chance to say goodbye, that was unbearable. I can do prison, I know that. But absence from you? That’s been my real punishment for far too long.’

  Outside, in the corridor, she heard Sergeant Harris’s footsteps walking up a few protective paces and back again, near but far enough away.

  Jimmy looked at the open doorway and then at Eve, and they both knew it was time to say goodbye for the time being.

  ‘There wasn’t a day I didn’t think of you, Jimmy. There wasn’t a day I didn’t remember how you saved me. Or all the other everyday kindnesses.’

  She looked at the door in her turn, wondering what she was going to tell people he’d said. She decided she’d be non-committal to the point of giving nothing away.

  ‘I’ll see you again, Eve.’

  ‘You’d better be sure of that, Jimmy.’

  ‘I remember you looking out of Mrs Tripp’s window that day, when I was getting hauled away by those fat coppers. You looked so sad. Do you remember?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Do you r
emember what I looked like?’

  She was about to explain her mental block, when a key turned in her brain and her memory cleared.

  For the millionth time she saw his face framed in the back window of the police car but, for the first time, his face came into focus like an image on the lens of a camera and she saw him, looking up and back, fifteen years old.

  ‘I remember exactly what you looked like. You looked so handsome. You looked full of love and defiance.’

  ‘Did you hear what I said to you?’

  ‘I saw your lips moving, but I couldn’t hear.’

  She pressed down on his hand, gathered him in her heart.

  ‘I said...’ began Jimmy. He smiled at her.

  ‘You said... I’ve always loved you and I always will. The same, Jimmy.’

  ‘I’ve always loved you and I always will, Eve. Whatever happens, don’t forget that, kid.’

  Epilogue

  At the reception desk in the corridor of Nazareth House, Clay watched her son Philip track the progress of one of the elderly residents being escorted by a nun who was not a great deal younger. She smiled at her husband Thomas, and wondered what thoughts were forming behind the intelligence in her four-year-old’s eyes.

  As the elderly resident and nun turned the corner and disappeared out of sight, Philip looked up at Eve. ‘Mum, is this where you lived when you were a kid?’

  ‘No, love. This is a home for old people. I lived in a kids’ home, St Michael’s.’

  Philip looked at the statue of the Virgin Mary and placed his index finger on the snake trampled beneath her feet.

  ‘Philip,’ said his dad. ‘If that statue falls over and lands on your feet, we’ll end in A & E at Alder Hey.’

  The little boy pressed his hands between his armpits and said, ‘It’s too quiet to be a kids’ home here. I’m not too crazy about this place.’

  Clay looked down the corridor and saw an old woman walking towards reception. Watching her come closer, she recognised the woman by the way she leaned slightly to the right and said, ‘It’s Maggie. Maggie Anderson.’