by David Carter
‘Would you like me to wait on for you?’
No one had ever said anything like that to me before. No one had ever wanted to wait for me for anything, not since I was a child. I could barely find the words to reply. Of course I would like her to wait.
I said, ‘I’d love you to wait.’
She moved closer, smiled at me again, zipping sparks down my spine, and then she said, ‘I’ll wait. For sure. What’s your name?’
‘Sam.’
‘OK, Sam, mine’s Desi.’
‘I know.’
Alan Steadman, the office wet, turned round and saw me standing close to this dark and pretty girl and shouted: ‘Eh up, looks like yellow balls is ducking out. Come on, Sam, if you’re coming,’ and he started making chicken noises.
We both glanced back at Steadman and scowled and she said, ‘You’d better go, Sam,’ and she leant across and kissed me on the cheek. I couldn’t believe it. I could feel the fire on my face. I cannot explain in writing how I felt back then, certainly I had never experienced feelings the depths of which swept through my entire body at that moment, being kissed tenderly by a complete stranger, though of course we were not strangers, we never were. It was as if we had known each other since the womb, and I still cannot explain that now, as I write this memoir of the earth shattering events of that late Saturday morning.
What kind of girl kisses a total stranger?
In broad daylight.
In front of other people.
How much courage did that take?
What kind of person could do that?
I know I couldn’t.
Can you imagine how special I felt at that second?
I suspect there are no words in the English language to describe it.
Far better men than I have tried and failed. The closest I can get is to say that if the whole of a person’s life could ever be compressed into a split second, then that split second would have been that exact moment.
The Glendower Aero Club, I will love you forever!
‘I’ll wait for you,’ she said, again, ‘Good luck, Sam, you’ll enjoy it.’
I still doubted that, but she smiled me away, and I ran after the others with springs on my feet, and bragged about pulling a new girlfriend. Me, the same guy who had pushed Machara up against the bus shelter and forced her to kiss me, the same guy who was fearfully rude to all of Jillian’s friends, the same guy who had to be drunk to ever find a girl at all, and she had to be drunker still.
They didn’t believe me of course, my friends from the tax office, that she said she’d wait for me, and I had my doubts about that too, and as I eagerly jumped from that plane, I volunteered to be the first to go, for I was in a hell of a hurry to get back down to earth, and the moment before the shute opened, I thought that if ever God was going to be really nasty, truly mean and wicked, now would be the moment to be so, minutes after I had found my life partner, he or she or it, or whatever God is or was, might have snatched that happiness away from me by snagging my shute. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when that multi coloured mushroom swirled open above me, and when it did, and it slowed me so, I wished that it had opened later, so that I could have been back on earth all the sooner.
Desiree was a woman of her word.
She always was.
There she was, standing there, swaying to and fro, her hands clasped together behind her back like a little girl at her first school assembly, or a mother flushed with happiness when her first son learns how to ride a bicycle, beaming at me just as before, only more so.
She unhesitatingly linked my arm, asked me how it had been, asked me to explain my emotions, and said she shared the same feelings, though neither of us wanted to talk about parachuting. There were so many other more important things to relate, as we made our way back toward the buildings.
Her friends were still there, hanging about, becoming irritated.
‘Come on Desi,’ one of them pleaded, ‘We are going to the Snooty Fox!’
‘Can’t today, boys. I’m sorry, but I’ve met my old friend, Sam, and we have so much to catch up on. Don’t we?’ she said, pulling me closer and peering and smirking into my eyes.
I nodded and said, ‘Yeah, we do.’
And that is exactly what we were. Old friends. Old friends who’d known each other minutes, yet we had known each other forever.
We had so much to catch up on.
Everything that had gone before, we couldn’t wait to share, and everything that was to come, we couldn’t wait to see, and think about, and whatever the future held, we would share every moment, hand in hand. The good times and the bad, and there would be plenty of both. We didn’t stop talking for hours. We didn’t stop talking once, not until we were gently making love in her apartment that overlooked the river Dee just above the old bridge.
She’d asked me if I’d like to accompany her back to Chester, and of course we both knew the answer to that. She’d led me back to her brand new Cayton Cerisa hatchback, while my friends and her friends gawped on in amazement, as if we were in a bubble, as if we couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t see us, and after that we’d driven to town, shared our first meal in some old pub in the main street, as we talked and talked and talked, and begged each other to know where we had been all our lives, and why the hell we hadn’t met sooner.
That night we made love on and off till the sun came up, and for longer still.
After that day I never slept with anyone else.
I have never thought about sleeping with anyone else.
I have never desired anyone else, and she said precisely the same thing, and I believed her.
I shall never lie with another woman.
Why should I?
Desiree Holloway was everything I desired.
Desiree Holloway was everything.
Desiree epitomised desire.
It was as plain and simple as that.
Desiree Holloway was desire.
When you have had the best nothing else will ever do.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Walter yawned and glanced at the clock. Twenty to six. He felt dreadfully tired. Someone else’s blood was gallivanting around his body, possibly donated by nine different people. Thank you, the nervous nine, I couldn’t live without you. At least it was human blood, hopefully. He set the diary down and ambled outside. Mrs West came out of her office wearing her going home face. ‘You still here? Thought I told you to go home early.’
‘Things to do.’
‘Well don’t stay too late.’
‘I won’t, ma’am.’
She nodded and headed for the door, just as Karen was coming back in. She ambled over and said, ‘How’s it going?’
Walter pulled a face and slowly nodded.
‘Chapters and chapters of his love for Desiree Holloway. He was smitten all right.’
‘Men get that way,’ she grinned.
‘Do they?’
‘Have you never felt that way?’
He thought for a single second, and said: ‘No.’
She pitied him, but didn’t say; then she wondered if he was being truthful. Men often aren’t when it comes to such matters, women too, though men were far worse, in her eyes they were. Much worse.
‘Do you mind if I shoot off? I’m going to have an early night.’
‘Nope, sure, fine, you get away, see you in the morning.’
He seemed oddly distant.
‘Are you all right?’
He focused his large dark eyes on her as if she’d just come in, and said, ‘Yeah, sure, I’m fine, see you tomorrow.’
Karen collected her bag and smiled and bobbed her head and turned about and left.
Walter went to the cloakroom and pondered on what she had said.
Have you never felt that way?
Yes, once, maybe, but that was long ago, and there was little point in dragging up old sores. He washed his hands, blew them under the drier, and returned to the private office, and the diarie
s.
––––––––
I have suffered many setbacks in my life, I am not alone in that, and I am not making excuses, and I don’t want pity, but nevertheless the knocks I took were bound to leave their mark.
My beloved mother died before I started school. My father took a mistress, the hateful and deceitful Donna Deary, who would slap me viciously when my father’s eyes were turned elsewhere. I suffered the loss of my beautiful house and garden where I played and learned of life. Then came the loss of my father in a violent and catastrophic accident, along with his new wife and my stepbrother, though I confess I did not shed a tear at their death. The loss of my inheritance, wasted in propping up a failing business that was being sucked dry by the scheming leech, Deary. The loss of my income and job at the flower shop I loved, the first true interest I ever developed, a love of flora that will remain with me always. Then Mrs Greenaway’s surprising rejection, and the trauma of being taken into care.
The cancellation of my scholarship to Kings, the loss of my dancing lessons that I adored so, the harassment and bullying at Saint Edmonds, the sickness to the pit of my stomach at being rejected by countless foster parents, who would stare down at me and force a closed mouthed smile, and shake their heads. He isn’t quite right, they’d often say, or, he’s definitely not the one for us, just look at him! As they made little attempt to conceal their opinions or their contempt or their distaste, as if I were stone deaf to their spitefulness.
The shame and worry of being harassed and pressurised and touched by the vicar Christian de Wyk, coming to terms with my slightly weird adolescent appearance during those crucial formative years, and almost worst of all, the breaking and loss of my wonderful voice on the eve of my big broadcast concert, a song festival that many forecast would change my life forever.
My silly falling in love and failed attempts at wooing Machara McGowan, and her trite and hurtful putdown – You’re no-ooo a Scot! And my unsuccessful dates with Jillian’s friends; and failed affairs with drunken women, old and young alike, some with teeth, some without.
Everyone suffers numerous setbacks in their life. It is only natural. That is what life is all about. Adversity, but few will have encountered as many as I.
And yet I would have traded all those losses in an instant to be rid of the one catastrophic blow that struck me down the day that Desiree was murdered. Something deep within me died that day. My love of life perhaps, my love of people, my sanity, they all came under ferocious attack.
One month before she died Desiree confessed her sins to me.
She had been keeping secrets from me, terrible things, appalling things, unbelievable things that at first I could not believe.
She was a killer.
I was living with a killer.
I was married to a killer.
She was killing innocent human beings.
The person I shared my life with, the person I shared my body with, the person I shared my mind and my destiny with, my soul with, was killing other people.
Can you imagine how you would deal with such a thing?
If the love of your life came home one day and spilled out such wickedness, what would you do? What would you say? Would you ever want them to touch you again? Would you move out? Would you divorce them? Would you call the police?
If you loved someone as I loved Desiree, you most certainly would not do those things because you could not live without them, yet you would never feel quite the same way again.
It placed terrible strains on our marriage, on our love.
Long after she was snatched from me I saw the black policeman on the television. He was threatening me. Saying things like we would be meeting soon, he would catch me, and I would have to look into his eyes and deal with him. While he was talking he’d look at the blonde sergeant, and she would glance affectionately back, and I knew there was a close bond between them, and I wanted to destroy that bond, I wanted to hurt them, I wanted to hurt them so bad. I wanted him and her to feel what it was like to lose someone that truly mattered, someone they desperately cared for, I wanted them to share my pain, I wanted to kill one of them, to see how they coped with that, and in time, I wanted to kill them both.
So, black policeman, if by some strange quirk of fate you should ever cast your bloated eyes over my diaries, as one day I know someone will, even if it is one of your successors, I want to recap the names of the dead to you, for they deserve to be remembered.
Pay close attention.
Roll-call begins.
Harold James Craddock.
Hilda Mary Anderton.
George Bellway Milkins.
Ena Frances Marlow.
William Richard Amos Clarke.
Michael Patrick O’Leary.
Thora Joyce Beckett.
Not the names you expected, eh?
Seven names. Seven human beings. Seven deaths. Seven murders.
Seven criminal killings committed by my darling wife Desiree Mitford Holloway during the course of her experimental work at Eden Leys. There were others too, but these were Desiree’s personal work. Seven deaths that affected her profoundly. Seven deaths that ultimately cost her her life, seven deaths that eventually provoked me to murder, seven times over.
Investigate that, why don’t you!
If you dare.
––––––––
Walter scribbled the names on his pad and set down his pen. Out of nowhere he suddenly felt quite ill. He glanced at the clock. Ten minutes to eight. Stood up. His legs shook, walking wasn’t easy. He was hungry and he wanted to go home. He eased the diaries into the metal cupboard, locked the door, attached the key to his key ring, went outside, slipped on his raincoat, bade the skeleton nightshift a curt goodnight, and limped away to find a cab.
Chapter Fifty-Six
He was back in the private office by 8am, wrote a note for Karen to come and see him as soon as she arrived, and returned to the office and the diaries.
––––––––
You probably think I am mad, and recently as have I written before, I questioned my own sanity. Perhaps that is why Desiree and I dovetailed so perfectly, for she too regularly questioned her sanity, and not without reason. But I am not mad when it comes to the information I have provided. Desiree did kill those seven people. They lost their innocent lives in the headlong pursuit in the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and I can prove it. I possess all of her case notes, all of the gruesome and grizzly facts.
She showed them to me because she could see the doubt in my eyes. I did not believe her; I did not believe she was capable of such heinous acts. I sat on her balcony as the beautiful Dee gurgled by, and read in great detail precisely what she did, what drugs she introduced, what incisions she made to the bodies and the brains, what tissue she removed, and what torture and torment she inflicted on the seven unfortunates.
I still find it difficult to believe, but I know it to be the truth.
You will too when you read the evidence.
Desiree’s file of terror is lodged at the offices of the Liverpool solicitor, Messrs Lambourn, Harcourt and Snapes, Sixth floor, Royal Liver Building, Liverpool.
The partner looking after the file is one Ms Bradbrook, though she likes to pronounce it Braybrook. For her to release the file you will need to quote the password: Deliverance.
––––––––
Walter set the diary down and picked up the phone and asked the operator to get the solicitor in Liverpool on the line.
The phone ran back a moment later, a sweet young girl boasting a slight Liverpool accent.
‘Good mornin’, Lambourn Harcourt and Snay-eeps.’
‘Is Ms Bradbrook there?’
‘Ms Braybrook, you mean?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Joost a mo, I’ll put ya through.’
Karen knocked and came in. Walter beckoned for her to sit down. Musak played in his ear. He pulled the names off the pad, han
ded them to her, said, ‘Suspicious deaths, all at Eden Leys, see what you can dig up.’
Karen glanced at the seven names and tried to whistle through her teeth.
‘And organise a car.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Liverpool.’
‘Okey-doke.’
Elizabeth Bradbrook came on the line.
‘Braybrook,’ she said, as if she were very busy and didn’t care to be disturbed.
‘Good morning, this is Inspector Darriteau, Chester Police.’
‘I’ve been expecting you.’
‘Really? You have something for me?’
‘I’m not sure I’d describe it quite like that. I have paperwork here I can release... on certain conditions.’
‘You have a file for me and I want it and I shall have it.’
‘We both know you would need a court order to do that, unless...’
‘I have the client’s password.’
‘Correct, and do you?’
‘Your late client was a mass murderer.’
‘Yet to be proven, I’d say.’
‘He tried to murder me!’
‘Oh dear. That was unfortunate. Do you have the password, Inspector?’
‘I do.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘I’m trying to.’
‘What time do you want to come?’
‘Eleven.’
‘I can do that.’
‘I’ll see you later.’
––––––––
Karen drove as she always did, too fast, zipping up the M53 in the unmarked jag, and on through the new Mersey tunnel that was no longer quite so new, before turning back toward the river and the Liver Building, the largest of the impressive structures known as The Three Graces, set facing the Pierhead overlooking the river. Karen found a metered parking space as Walter took a police badge from the glove compartment and set it in view. They stepped out into the windy sunshine, glanced at the grey river, back at the grey building, and the big clock at the top that said five to eleven.
Ms Braybrook didn’t keep them waiting. She was older than she sounded on the phone, and came straight to the point.