Head Case

by Ross Armstrong

  I start to question what I see before me. A performance. A construction, designed to misdirect?

  I bolt before I have to make a decision about her question. Resolving that I have more important queries of my own. I dart upstairs. Leaving her standing, stunned in her living room.

  ‘Where are you going? This is my house!’

  ‘Tom?’ Bartu is not far behind, but I’m at the top of the stairs and heading into the bedroom. Hers. Tanya’s. I open the cupboard. I see nothing but the bear that falls out once more.

  ‘Wanna play? Wanna play?’ it says, shrilly.

  The cat scarpers from somewhere under my feet and I want to kick out at the bastard, only just managing to keep my grip and remember my new found love for the animal kingdom.

  I turn and bang my fist on the wall just next to her wardrobe.

  I can smell blue. I knock methodically, testing for a difference in sound. Then turn and I bang my fist on her chest of drawers, the one that held the photos the first time we were here. Ms Fraser and Bartu arrive in the doorway just as I burst out and head into Ms Fraser’s bedroom.

  I throw open her wardrobe. Nothing. I go to the wall that separates her room and her daughter’s. I rap on it with my knuckles.

  Knock. Knock.

  I explore its expanse.

  Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

  ‘You can come out now,’ I say.

  They stand in the doorway watching.

  A silence. Nothing.

  I knock again: Knock…Knock.

  Bartu takes a step towards me. Carefully, like he doesn’t want to spook the inmate who has sharpened the end of his spoon to a point.

  I knock, feebly: Knock, knock.

  I look to her. She seems terrified. Not guilty, nothing like that at all. As Bartu runs in to smother me, I escape his grasp and go back into Tanya’s room. I take a deep breath through my nose.

  ‘Oh,’ I mutter.

  At full flight I lunge towards the chest of drawers and reach for the exact spot where the photos were. They’re not there, but it’s not the photos I’m after. I reach into my jacket pocket for my gloves. And only after I’ve put them on do I lift a blue scarf from the wardrobe and put my nose to it and breathe deep.

  ‘I’m – I’m so sorry. I’ve been so stupid.’

  Ms Fraser looks on, calmer now, but justifiably wary of me.

  ‘What is it?’ she says, desperately.

  ‘I’ve been so… I’ve missed something.’

  Bartu holds both palms to me, showing me he is going to approach with caution. She stiffens up and her wide eyes seem to feel for me across the room. I look at her and speak before I tap Bartu on the back calmly and head downstairs.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I need this.’

  ‘Please find my baby,’ she says, barely holding it together as I nod to her, offering all the assurance a man such as I can.

  And then I’m gone, out the door, and we rush towards the car and the station and I curse my lack of care and inability to master my own senses the last time I was here.

  *

  The forensic specialist isn’t hard to find. When we see him, he recognises Bartu and comes out from behind his window.

  ‘Hi, we need something testing,’ I say, steamrollering their greeting.

  ‘Oh, hi. Tom, isn’t it? Good to see you,’ he says taking a plastic glove off awkwardly, before offering his hand for a shake. It still unnerves me how many people know my name.

  ‘We need you to run some tests on this, mate,’ Bartu says, as I push the clear plastic bag containing the scarf at the guy.

  ‘Tests for what?’ he says, innocently.

  Emre looks to me.

  ‘Dammit,’ I think. ‘What am I asking for?’ My actions are running ahead of my thoughts. I’m certain it’s one of those keepsakes they exchanged, so there should be traces of him all over it. Him and her.

  ‘A man has held this in his hands. I need to know who he is.’

  I watch the lab guy’s thoughts swim around his head and harden into barriers. The logical questions come next.

  ‘Err… sure, but what tests do you need, specifically? They all take time and we’re kind of busy, Tom.’

  ‘The tests. You know… .’ I say, as Bartu’s body language changes, separating himself from this fumbling man in the technical area.

  ‘You know, DNA?’

  ‘Right. Are we talking tests for blood, hair and skin? ‘Cos a conclusive serology test will take some time. And you should know that if this man doesn’t have a criminal record, then he won’t be one of the lucky six million people in our DNA database. So, unless you’ve got some of the guy’s blood, skin or hair handy to test it against…’

  I give him a blank face. Then devote a couple of seconds to wondering how on earth I would have that to hand. It’s only later, when replaying this conversation, that I realise this was the frank yet belittling humour of the expert.

  ‘No, I don’t have any of his blood, hair or skin with me.’

  ‘Right. Your quickest bet is a preliminary test for saliva and semen with a UV light. And if there’s something of that nature there then it’s not too hard to draw the DNA and try the database,’ he says. My heart pumps fast and my tongue rolls around, exploring my mouth with excitement.

  ‘But, we’re a pretty busy right now,’ he says, with an apologetic wince. ‘I don’t know whether you know but some blood was found –’

  ‘Yeah, we know. Is it possible to check for fingerprints too?’ Bartu says.

  ‘In theory, yes. I mean, I’d prefer glass for a good print. Paper, a dashboard, not bad either. Fabric is… formidable, but possible. It’d take weeks to get a beautiful, full print, but I could tell you fairly quickly whether there’s anything vaguely usable on it.’

  ‘Okay, deal, we’ll go for saliva, semen and prints,’ I say, dropping one of my cards on the cold metal table between us.

  ‘Right, well, I’ll try to do it by end of day, but no promises. Who’s this for by the way?’

  ‘Call me when it’s done,’ batting away the question. ‘And thank you… err… err…’ his name is written on his badge, and I’d been eyeing it distractedly throughout our conversation.

  ‘Thanks Aar…’

  Bartu is at the door. Lab guy smiles at me encouragingly.

  ‘Alan!’

  ‘Yes. That’s… no worries,’ says Alan who, I would later find out, is named Aaron, and is far too polite for his own good.

  ‘Oh guys?’ says Aaron. ‘I’m going to need a name?’

  I look to the floor and say it.

  ‘Turan,’ I sigh, out of moves. ‘Inspector Turan. But… he’ll be tied up all evening and I’m your best first port of call.’

  I’m pleased with the dexterity with which I end the conversation, but not delighted with having to throw the name.

  ‘Well, that went well,’ Bartu says, as we go. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s being sarcastic.

  32

  ‘The boy next door likes a shake and fries

  He’d like to take you home and try you on for size.’

  Bartu had pointed out the snooker hall our man tends to frequent in the evenings, so I knew I had a decent chance, but it was by no means a sure thing.

  For a hundred reasons I’ve decided to go this one alone and leave Bartu and Aisha to a meal for two. The fissure of mistrust in our relationship has by turns narrowed and gaped of late. That’s why I didn’t even tell him I was coming here, instead concocting a high concept story about an early night, which he believed, as it suited him to do so.

  However, arriving at 9.45pm, paying my two-pound entrance fee, and getting ogled by every punter in the place, makes me wish I had company on my side, or, failing that, had at least informed someone of my whereabouts. I clutch my facial recognition sheet as a mascot, my eyes scouring the room in search of Turan. I have a request to make. And a quiz question to ask too
.

  I’m pleased to see that not everyone is engaged in a game of snooker, or some other table sport. Some chat, some see it as a quiet, out of the way place to start the business of drinking long into the small hours. All of this helps me feel a little less like a lost tourist in a shark tank. But, as I clutch my lemonade, plenty of sharks seem to be probing me with wandering eyes. Sticking out like a sore thumb is something I’m used to, but people seem to stare in this sleazy place more than anywhere else. A sea of faces, colours and races. My presence seems to offend them all. Some looks linger on me longer than others, probably recognising me from the paper. I’d naively tried to cover my appearance with shades, but that doesn’t seem to have worked. As I look across the room I’m pleased to see I’m not alone. Another guy sits drinking and talking, shades on, in a low-lit room.

  I almost smile at him as he turns around and glances my way. He’s helping me to blend me in. But he doesn’t smile back, instead he looks away faster than most, carrying on his chat as if slightly disturbed. I tend to have that effect on people. Just as I start to take a closer look at him, I get a firm tap on the shoulder.

  ‘Hey. What you doing here, man?’ Turan says, out of the corner of his mouth, as if caught talking to the least cool kid in school at lunch.

  ‘Looking for you,’ I say.

  He nods and takes a look around again. Above all, I don’t want to get on his bad side. He’s not Jarwar. He’s the outsider. The guy on the force who isn’t so caught up in procedure and the whispers that go on behind my back.

  ‘That’s cool. What’s up?’ he says, sitting down next to me, keeping his eyes on the room.

  ‘I know this seems unusual…’ I say.

  ‘It always does with you mate,’ he says.

  ‘I dropped something in at the lab today. Got backed into a corner. Said it was courtesy of you. If they ask, can you back me up?’

  The thought seems to take a while to hit. His brow furrows.

  ‘You’re going to have to tell me what it is my friend. I should at least ask that, shouldn’t I?’

  He has a point.

  ‘Something I found at one of the girls’ houses. A scarf.’

  He nods tentatively, troubled by this, I sense.

  ‘You think you might get what? A trace of someone on it?’

  ‘It’s a shot in the dark. One of the last we have.’

  He knew I was following my own lines of investigation, but I guess he didn’t know I was in it this deep.

  ‘Okay, whatever. Whatever I can do to help. I’ll vouch.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  And I almost start to rise. Then decide to stay right where I am. I’m finally putting something together.

  ‘Hey, Turan, who’s that guy?’ I say, nodding towards the man in the shades, who’s looking over to us again.

  ‘What guy?’ he says.

  ‘The guy over there? All in black. Shades. I think we saw him before. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Did we?’ he says, nonplussed again.

  ‘Look, I didn’t tell you something else and maybe I should’ve.’

  ‘What? About this guy?’ he says.

  ‘Maybe. The caretaker at the school said he kept seeing a guy hanging around school. His kind of age and look. Maybe I’m being paranoid. He just seems to be around an awful lot.’

  Turan stays still, thinking. Then I go to speak again, but before I can he rises and goes over to the guy, and starts talking at him intensely. I amble over too. Possibly he’s someone Turan knows well. Someone he keeps close but doesn’t exactly trust. The scene in the chicken shop certainly suggested that. By the time I get to them things have become physical. I notice an old cut on the guy’s forehead.

  ‘Take a walk with me,’ Turan says to the guy.

  But the guy doesn’t want to budge, so Turan grabs him by his shirt collar and throws him into a dim backroom. The pool hall doesn’t even flinch. As if this is an ordinary occurrence.

  Lit only by neon pints of lager, Turan has the guy up against the wall. He’s no procedure man; this is his world.

  ‘Tell me about your side-line taking pictures of little girls.’

  ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,’ the guy says.

  ‘Well, my mate here says you do. My mate here has got another mate, who caught you at it. So you fill in the rest, okay?’

  It was still a hunch. I’m nervous for the guy. I start to worry about where this goes next.

  ‘No, I… got a sister that goes there, so sometimes I’m around…’

  The guy tries to spit it out but is stopped in his tracks by a firm blow to the face. He took the hit like he didn’t see it coming. Which interests me. He didn’t seem to sense the fist until it was right under his nose. He didn’t even flinch.

  His glasses fall and I glimpse his full face, but it’s too fast and half-lit for a man like me to glean anything useful from it before he replaces them. Fortunately for him the force of the hit wasn’t enough to break them. But two more vicious kicks to the groin and stomach aren’t helping his wellbeing.

  I notice the shape of the cut on his forehead again. It’s like a small red frown.

  ‘Okay, fuck!’ he groans. ‘Someone asked me to. Wanted pictures of the girls. I didn’t know what it was for. I don’t ask questions. It was just a fucking job!’

  I take off my shades, slip them into my pocket.

  ‘Who? Who asked you to?’ Turan shouts.

  I get the impression that this guy is a kind of mercurial, fair-weather friend of the law. He helps them out a little from time to time. Certainly does a few other shadier things that they know less about. Turan raises his fists again.

  ‘A name! Who asked you to take the pictures?!’ he says, eyes wild and wide, just before he gets a rising kick to the balls and Rabbit breaks for the exit.

  I try and make a grab for him, but he barges me to the ground. I labour to get up and by the time I open the door to the main hall, he’s heading down the stairs and out of the exit at a pace that’s far too much for me.

  ‘I’ll find him, don’t worry,’ Turan says as he rises.

  We assess our various damage for a second, my bruise and scar throbbing again. Then I go for it.

  ‘Hey Turan?’ I say, my adrenalin up. ‘Did you ever hear anything about a paedophile ring? One involving police officers? I was reading that this murderer, Ed Rampling, said in court that –’

  ‘Yeah, those kinds of people are always bargaining. Or trying to throw blame elsewhere with some bullshit. Everyone’s got a story.’

  ‘Sure. Only thing is, I’ve been thinking… Rampling’s other five victims were white collar white males; the girls don’t make sense, in terms of the pattern. Evidence wasn’t so concrete either, but the police seemed to want it to stick. So I’m just saying it’s possible.’

  He cracks his neck while taking it in. This is what I like about the man. Anyone else on the force would give me a straight no. He’s a maybe man.

  When I looked at the two women that etched themselves onto my screen the night I watched those two tapes, I couldn’t help but place the silhouette from the first video, and Sarah in the second, side by side. I think they’re inextricably linked. I believe this other woman is responsible for Sarah’s disappearance. I also want to believe Sarah is alive. Her old cells, now made entirely new. Her life, irrevocably shifted on its axis. But her heart, beneath her callow skin, still beating somewhere.

  ‘…on that tape, that got stolen, was the silhouette of a woman. And when I asked Jarwar about Rabbit, she was evasive. So, I just –’

  ‘Does anyone else know about the tape? That it ever existed?’

  ‘No one. We didn’t tell, ‘cos we weren’t supposed to have it.’

  ‘Okay, look, I’m not saying some shit doesn’t go down here. But I can’t see that. Not a copper. But do one thing for me? Keep all this close to your chest, for now. For both our safeties.’

  ‘What are
we going to do?’ I say, looking him up and down.

  ‘Leave it to me. I haven’t had a chance to look into those thrity-eight names yet, but I will. Tomorrow. Till then, just to be safe, don’t go anywhere with any officer if you can help it. Don’t get drawn into anything. Not for a few days.’

  ‘Not even Bartu?’

  ‘Not even Bartu. Not if you can help it. I’ll let you know when our photographer pops his head up again. When he does, I’ll grab it.’

  ‘Ha. They call him Rabbit, right?’

  Even lit only by the neon glow, I can see Turan’s white T-Shirt is now damp with sweat. He makes a face like a zero, giving nothing to the positive or negative. Then sniggers.

  ‘That’s right. I’ll grab our Rabbit. You’re right, he does always seem to be hanging around. Leave it with me, okay?’

  I bow my head, my hand on the door of this dark room, thoughts rumbling through my synapses. I don’t know what I’ve got myself mixed up in, maybe I shouldn’t have come here at all. Maybe Anita and Ryans are right, maybe I do need to take better care of myself.

  I hustle to leave but before I do he squeezes my shoulder tight, like a big brother, not letting me go.

  ‘Trust me. We’re gonna sort this out,’ he says.

  But I’m not sure who I trust less at this point.

  Him. Them. Or myself.

  Documented Telephone Conversation #3

  ‘Yes?’ he says. A dog barks in the background.

  ‘Hi. Hello there. Can I speak to Mrs Castle please?’

  ‘Who is this?’ the man says. Deep and weary of voice.

  ‘I’m a friend of her daughter.’

  ‘Who is this? How did you get this number?’ he says.

  ‘Well, I’m a member of the police force, you see –’

  ‘You were a friend of hers? Or you’re a member of the police force? Which is it?’

  ‘Both. Sir, my name is Tom Mondrian and I’d really like to –’

  ‘She won’t want to speak to you.’

  I’d checked in with Amit at the The Corner Shop. Unlike me, he’s got an excellent memory of everyone we went to school with. He remembered Sarah just fine. Said she’d kept her father’s name when her mother remarried. He said her stepdad’s name was Castle. Once I’d found this out, it made their number a whole lot easier to find.