by Guy N Smith
“Some chance.”
“That’s the problem.”
“Don’t go taking it personally, Jason.”
It was personal. Just like Loony Liz.
“Hi, Jason!”
Ford turned, saw Brenda Braithwaite, she looked like she was just going off duty. She had a flat oblong, brown paper parcel tucked beneath her arm. His pulses stepped up a gear for different reasons this time. Brenda had always been special to him. But, like most other things, he kept it to himself. He would never tell her and he didn’t want her even to guess. That could complicate his life still further.
“Finished for the day, Bren?”
“Yes, thank God, it’s been a pig.”
“Been shopping?” He asked the obvious simply because he found difficulty making trivial conversation.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I bought a painting. In fact, the artist brought it in here to me, I’d seen her work and expressed an interest in it. Here, let me show you, it’s absolutely fantastic.” She laid her parcel on the desk, began unwrapping it. “See what I mean.”
“It’s a beauty, all right,” Ford recognised the setting, the lake and its surrounds. “That’s the recreation park back of the flats.”
“That’s right.”
He held back from saying ‘I was there on Sunday afternoon’ because he felt guilty about it. He wouldn’t have liked Brenda to know that he’d been chatting to another woman. He wondered if she knew that Serena was gone. Somebody would surely tell her before long. Funny, he wanted her to know but he wasn’t going to tell her himself. And even then he wouldn’t do anything about it because he was scared of another relationship. He said, “There’s a lot of work gone into those ducks, probably as much as has gone into the rest of the picture.”
“She’s obviously got a thing about ducks. Funny. Despite their circumstances, so many people are prone to animal obsession, directing their hatred for humans into their love for animals.”
“How d’you mean?”
“I’ve been in with Mitchell, your Black Mantis, this afternoon. Just routine. She’s not bothered about the possibility of being sent down, maybe it hasn’t sunk in yet, her greatest worry is what it going to happen to her cats at home. She’s afraid her folks will get rid of them, either that or they won’t feed them and they’ll die. You can ask her things but all she wants to talk about is her cats. I guess the other girl is like that, too, but her obsession is ducks. But she’s lucky, she’s free, she can go and paint them, feed them, watch then every day if she wants to. I guess that’s the difference.”
“Who … Who painted this picture, Bren?”
“Nobody famous, I can assure you. A girl from the flats, you won’t have heard of her.”
“Who?”
“Jesus, what’s gotten into you, Jason Ford?” WPC Braithwaite stared in surprise; she had never known the other get worked up over anything before.
“I … have … to … know.” He was tense; his features appeared to have drained of every vestige of colour.
“All right, if it’ll make you happy,” she was humouring him, he was overwrought and overworked, he needed to look after himself. “Her name is Kate Leonard.”
“Kate Leonard! Of number 177, thirteenth floor, Valley Tower.” He reached the address out of his memory files, stored there in readiness for when they might be needed. And this one would never be needed more than it was right now.
“Yes, that’s right,” she looked up in amazement from re-wrapping her painting. “How on earth did you know that, Jason?”
“Jesus, it’s been staring me in the face and I was too blind to see it! Of course, the ducks are the link! Ducks, cats, whatever, she had to love something!”
He’d flipped for sure; he needed to see a doctor, a long rest …
“Bren?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going there, this very minute, to Valley Tower. It might be okay; I might be able to handle it. I might just be wrong but I don’t think so. Would you mind stopping on here, say for half an hour. If I haven’t called in by eleven, call Chief Dawson, here’s his home number. Tell him where I’ve gone and by that time I’ll need back up. We’ll need the Operational Support Unit by then. We’ve had serial killers before but not a woman. And she’s the most dangerous of the lot!”
“What, Leonard!”
“The Black Mantis, Bren. That’s who she is.”
“Jason, I think …” WPC Braithwaite glanced around the central office. Inspector Howarth was talking to a couple of DC’s. She almost called him over; she would have done had it been anybody other than Jason Ford.
Crazy as it all sounded, she had an instinctive faith in him. And, anyway, what was half an hour.
“All right, but no longer.”
“Thank you,” he squeezed her hand, the first time he’d ever touched her. “I think it’s best that I go on foot, it’s only a five minute walk. See you soon.”
He tried not to run, kept to a fast walk, took a short cut through an alleyway that probably saved him a minute. A gut feeling, he knew he was right, he also knew that it was a matter of life and death even if it was only his own.
The tower block dwarfed him, gave him a sense of insignificance. You sensed the dereliction even in the darkened silhouette; just one lighted window way up toward the top, a tiny pulse of life within a dead giant. He didn’t need to count the floors all the way up, he knew it was the thirteenth.
He blamed himself for not having realised; it wasn’t until he saw the painting that he knew, the way those ducks were portrayed with such loving care. Nobody could have bettered their lifelike reproduction. The girl by the lake had not meant anything to him until then.
Directing her hatred for humans into her love for animals. Ducks.
He took the stairs for the same reason that he had opted to walk here. She would have heard a car draw up, just as she would hear the lift. She must not know until it was too late.
The flights seemed endless, most of the bulbs had been smashed on the landings, the place was a minefield of empty drink cans. A huddled body snored loudly in a darkened corner, Ford heard rats scurrying at his approach.
Throughout the ascent he had counted the floors. One left to go.
His foot was resting on the next stair when the screaming started, the anguished shrieking of somebody up above who was in sudden mortal agony. That was when Ford finally broke into a run, knew that his hunch had not failed him, that it had been a matter of life and death. Now it was probably death.
It was a man who screamed.
33.
It was as though every nerve and muscle in Kate’s body had suffered instant paralysis, a living statue which saw and understood but was incapable of any reaction.
She stared at the erect organ, that all too familiar length of flesh hanging down from it like an unkempt beard on a tiny wrinkled face. It seemed to mock her with a gloating phallic smile.
“I would have come even had you not called,” Doctor Whittaker’s tone was one of mingled sadness and affection. “Maybe not tonight, nor even tomorrow, but certainly one night. As it happened, you could not have phoned at a more appropriate moment.” He fingered himself as he spoke. His other hand clicked the blade back into its metal sheath, then flicked it out again. There was no mistaking the threat.
Kate tried to speak, her lips quivered but no sound came from them.
“Sometimes I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” he was standing within a foot of her now, she could smell his peppermint flavoured breath. He had also used some heavily scented bath oil. “Other times, I’m glad it is. You see, once I was a happily married man, very much in love. That didn’t end completely when my wife left me because there was still hope. Whilst she was alive there was always the possibility that she might return. Indeed, I think she would have done eventually,” his glasses were misted. “But when she died, it was all over. I died then. And was reborn. Into what I am now.�
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She managed to speak at last, a faltering whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. For both of us. But I understand enough of the human mind to accept that it is too late for me to change. There is only one way out, I tried and failed, it is futile even to think of it again. I found it impossible to take my own life. I am a coward.”
“I like you, Glenn. In spite of everything, even what I’ve seen now and understand and hate you for that one thing. I still like you.”
“I know. Oh, don’t think that I wasn’t aware of it. I could have had you if I’d wanted. Without this. But it was too late by then because I’d already taken you that afternoon. After that I knew that I couldn’t have you any other way, I wouldn’t want to. It was the most ecstatic screw of my live, far superior to anything which I’d ever experienced in my marriage, even. I would have searched for you and found you again had you not saved me the trouble by coming to me. I knew then that it was only a matter of time. I’ve anguished over it but there was no other way. You do understand, don’t you?”
“You don’t have to rape me, Glenn.”
“Oh, but I do, that’s just what you don’t understand, I don’t expect you ever will. Now, take off your clothes, please.”
Buttons and zip were difficult to manipulate with shaking fingers. He watched her undress but he made no move to help her. He had given the order, he expected to be obeyed. There was no hurry, they had all night. And beyond.
He saw her remove a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her Levi’s. She was entitled to that.
“You have a beautiful cunt,” he spoke with appreciation rather than lust. “My wife had, too. She was like you in many ways. Please lie down on the floor.” The knife blade pricked her neck.
He stood over her like a colossus; she viewed him from the underside. There was no mistake, she had never doubted that. She was neither scared nor repulsed. Just relieved. She could screw when she had to, she had long ago mastered the technique of divorcing herself from emotion.
“It’s afterwards that worried me most,” he knelt in between her open thighs. “That is always what troubles me. I’ve killed two of them. I had no cause to.”
“I read it in the papers.”
“Everybody read it in the papers. Yet I felt no urge to kill you, there has to be some significance in that but it eludes me. I hope I won’t kill you.”
“You don’t need the knife, you know.”
“I do! Otherwise everything is meaningless, I might as well have seduced you on the examination couch at the surgery. You have to fuck, you know, you don’t have any choice.”
“Why did you kill those prostitutes, Glenn?”
“Because they were slags, dirty whores who spread disease. They could have given me Aids. I might pass it on to you, kill you that way. Who knows? I lusted for their sleaze and afterwards I was ashamed of myself. I lusted for you, Kate, but in a different way. I used to lust for my wife like that. Once, in the early days of our marriage, she persuaded me to act out a rape fantasy she had. Just the once, I think she was ashamed of herself afterwards. She never asked me to do it again. Perhaps she didn’t realise how much it excited me, too. A lack of communication, she might still have been with me if we’d talked about it, gone on doing what we both secretly enjoyed. That’s something I’ll never know. Do you understand.”
“I think so.”
“You’re lying,” there was a trace of petulance in his voice now. “I don’t think you do. I don’t think anybody possibly can. Least of all me. So, please, don’t try to understand me, just accept me as I am.”
He leaned forward, made the first contact. There was an expression of almost ecstasy on his face, he closed his eyes, opened them again. “Do you know, Kate, I even considered asking you to marry me. Does that shock you?”
“No, the thought crossed my mind, too. A fantasy, perhaps. Is it too late?”
“I’m afraid it is. I wish you had come to see me before I found you that afternoon. It might not have been too late then. I could have forgotten the first slut, maybe put all that behind me. They’ll never catch me, you know, I’m too clever for them, always one step ahead.”
“The Black Mantis thought that and they’ve caught her.”
“How do you know what she thought?”
“I just think I do.”
“Nobody will ever know for sure, no psychiatrist will ever find out how her mind works.”
“Why do you think she circumcised men?”
“Because she had a hatred for foreskins that stemmed from something that happened to her.” He eased gently into her. Kate’s arms went up and back, folded beneath her head. She seemed relaxed, still held the tissue in her right hand. “I would say that it stems from either child abuse or rape. Whoever did whatever to her was uncircumcised and that is how she pictured all men. She was trying to erase her guilt by circumcision. She hadn’t been fucked by a circumcised penis so if all men became circumcised then it couldn’t have happened to her, if you see what I mean. It’s very complex, it doesn’t make sense, probably not even to her. I just think I know what she was trying to do. She would never have stopped.”
Kate stiffened as he pushed right inside her. By sheer willpower she deadened her senses; she wouldn’t orgasm. Not by screwing, anyway. She would fake it, if necessary; she hoped that she didn’t have to.
He grunted, went on. “I abhor circumcision for any reason except a medical one when there is no possible alternative. The foreskin is the primary male erogenous zone, just as the clitoris is that of the female. Right now I can feel my sensitivity beginning there. These freaks who derive pleasure from the thought of being circumcised, it is the fear that really excites them. They have no desire to lose their foreskins, that is the last thing they want, it is the sheer terror of the prospect of it happening that turns them on. It is the ultimate in masochism.”
“I see.” She closed her eyes.
His rhythm was steady, a gradual build up. Once the knife blade scratched her neck. It was his springboard to an orgasm. She sensed him starting, his back straightened like it had that time before, his shudderings were starting.
She shut herself right off.
Then he was easing out of her, the knife hand fell away, hung limply by his side. She looked up and their eyes met.
As she knew he would, he said, “I’m sorry, I really am.”
“Don’t think any more about it,” the hand holding the tissue went between her thighs. Then it came back up and he felt her starting to wipe him off.
“You don’t have to.” He looked surprised, disappointed, “I’m thinking …” He was obviously struggling with himself, “what we both thought about a relationship, even marriage. I’m wondering if it would be possible.”
“I don’t know, I’d have to think about it, too.”
“Perhaps, even now, it’s not an impossibility.”
“What do you think they’ll do to her, Glenn?”
“Who?”
“The Black Mantis.”
“Oh … I hope they put her away for a very long time. She doesn’t realise just what she’s done to those men. Or, perhaps she does, and that’s why she’s done it.”
He felt her extending his elasticated skin, dabbing at it, smoothing the tissue over it. The fingers that brushed against him felt hard. Too hard.
Suddenly, it was all over. He was circumcised and she was leaping back, bloody knife in one hand, his severed flesh held gloatingly aloft in the other. He did not even scream to begin with, just knelt, watched the blood pouring from his wound, forming a crimson pool between his knees.
“Bitch!” He didn’t even say it with venom. He didn’t even believe what he saw. The knife slipped from his grasp, bounced on the floor. His fingers moved, with difficulty secured a grip on the circumcision; he gasped his pain aloud as he pulled the skin right up, held it at its reduced extremity and then clamped it with forefinger and thumb of both hands. The blood flow slowed at once, became a seepage.
Doctor Whittaker screamed just once. His glasses had slipped at an angle, hung precariously. His lips were a thin line; his nostrils flared as he breathed deeply and slowly, closed his eyes. Maybe he was counting, knew the time limit on his improvised tourniquet as if he had prepared himself for such an eventuality.
Kate was perplexed, she had expected him to rile, maybe stagger for the door. Instead, he continued to kneel there, staunching the bleeding. And his improvised treatment was working.
“You can’t go to the police,” she mocked him, walked across to where his knife lay, picked it up. “And I certainly won’t.”
“I shall need to stitch the wound,” his voice sounded far away, like he spoke to himself to jog a fading memory of what had to be done. “I shall have to treat it for possible infection, too.”
“How long does it take to stop the bleeding?”
“About an hour.” He paused, regarded her through his tilted glasses. “Are you satisfied now?” He was sweating heavily.
“I … don’t … know.”
“Was it me you were hunting or somebody else?”
“You. And my father. I’ll find him one day. He abused me as a child.”
“And he was uncircumcised, had an abnormally long foreskin?”
“Yes.”
“It figures.” He was leaning back against the wall, his eyes were closed again. “I meant what I said, you’ve got a beautiful cunt.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re going to let this Mitchell girl take the rap?”
“Yes.”
“Funny, isn’t it, we were hunting each other and neither guessed until now. And it could have been so different.” His features were strained and white. “It still could be.”
“I don’t think so. I think you might die, Glenn, even if you are a doctor.”
“If I could only get to the surgery I could carry out the necessary stitching, take some painkillers. Also I’ll need something to guard against infection. I’ll be all right then.”
“You can’t drive and hold your prick at the same time.” She laughed, it bordered on hysteria.