by Max Hardy
‘Three murderers. I’m trying to understand patterns so we can figure out who the fourth might be. Just wondering if this is about sex. The first set of victims were buggered, the second set had their clitorises ripped off and the third had their heads forced up their vaginas.’
‘I saw the ‘Fallen Angels’ video on the news and do you know what struck me. Yes, she asked people to question their faith and why they fear it. Yes, the monsters who killed those girls are probably nutters and an extremely radical representation of their faith. But what struck me was the underlying tenants of those faiths and the way they perceive and treat women. It might not be about sex, it might be about the sexes.’
I look at her in open admiration, nodding my head as I write that hypothesis down on a post it and hand it to her. ‘Way to go Miss Pankhurst. I think you might just be onto something there. There is no doubt that Madame Evangeline is a force of nature. She has no problem using sex to get what she wants. You know that probably more than anyone.’
‘Like I said, she taught me well. Including how you use sex as a weapon to cajole and control. I’m doing it to you now. I saw your eyes light up when I talked about being a voyeur. Do you want to hear more?’ she teases as she pops the post-it note onto the wall and then unrolls a map she is holding and pins that to the wall too.
‘I heard quite a bit on the Hanlon tapes. All about your encounters with Madame Evangeline.’ I answer as I approach the map, noting the clusters of dots marked on it. Three distinct areas, but the most surprising thing was the sheer number of dots.
‘I don’t think you’ve heard about them all. I counted them today as I marked up the map and it even surprised me. In the space of a year we met seventy three times. Statistically, once every five days although practically it wasn’t like that. What you heard on the tapes was only an abridged version of events. I could tell you in intimate detail about every single one of those encounters if you want me to?’ she teases, deliberately running the stump of her tongue as close to her lips as possible. Her eyes, full of playful wickedness make the grotesqueness of the action alluring, distracting me again.
‘Trust me, my tackle is in no fit state to react to even the most lurid or erotic of descriptions and it will waste precious time finding out what we need to. Is there any significance in your mind to the clustering of the encounters?’ I ask, hopefully distracting her attention from the fact that I am ever so slightly embarrassed and flustered at her candidness. It didn’t work.
‘The first set, around Leith are when I would meet her at clubs like Sodom and Gomorrah, where she regularly performed cunnilingus on my aching hot clitoris. Most of the legal and illegal sex scene on a club basis is centred around that area. The second set are centred on the Holyrood area. Now that was a lot of outdoor activity, a lot of alfresco sex, a lot of teasing and tantalising, flashing bare flesh and erect nipples, masturbating and fingering each other in bushes knowing we were being watched. Knowing we were being watched by politicians, or civil servants. Basically people of power. Lastly, the mews, the crescents, the courts and the squares around the far end of Princess Street, an area with a lot of wealth in a small footprint. It is true what they say, wealth does lead to excess. Your eyes would water at some of the excess we witnessed. That’s where we would watch through cracks in curtains, knowing that the people in the houses knew they were being watched. We would live in shadows, mere metres away from people passing in the night. The thrill of being so close to the city centre, so close to normal life and having your lover caress and squeeze your naked breasts, having her fervently forcing her fingers in and out of your yearning cunt as you spy on others doing the same thing is just so intoxicating. The whole experience was liberating.’
She is looking at my profile, I can feel her emerald eyes burning into my ruddy cheek. I turn and see her mouth closed, her lips pouting at me, those eyes simmering. She places a hand tenderly on my groin and strokes the erection growing in my jeans, making me gasp.
‘There’s nothing at all wrong with your tackle.’ she smirks, removing her hand and punching me playfully in the forearm, her eyes changing from simmering to soulful. ‘Making someone feel like you do right now is what she taught me. I have just disarmed every single one of your defence mechanisms with a few chosen words, a single touch and an intensity of personality. She gave me the belief to do that. She had me challenge morality. She made me fearless of sex. Why did she teach me to do that?’
My pulse is racing, I can feel my heart battering my eardrums with the rhythm of my coursing blood. She is absolutely right. She has disarmed me. If she told me right now to lay on the bed and do any bloody sexual act under the sun to her, I would. I would have no qualms about it. Jess had the same impact on me sexually. Which isn’t a surprise as she is Madame Evangeline.
I jump as my pocket begins to vibrate, sending another jolt down my erection. Rebecca giggles as I reach in there and pull out my phone awkwardly, trying hard not to touch myself.
‘Harry, where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get you for hours. Did you see her come down from the monument?’ I ask overtly down the phone, still trying to distract my mind from images of Rebecca naked.
‘Sorry John. I had a domestic issue with one of the girls, her pony has gone lame and I needed to make some urgent calls to vets. Bloody phone ran out of battery then. I’ve only just managed to steal a charger.’
‘No problem, these things happen. Did you see her come down?’ I reiterate probably a little too impatiently.
‘Sorry John, I didn’t. I hung around just on the main street for about twenty minutes, well after they had cleared the area. I can only guess that she got away before you came down.’
‘Shit! Okay. How about the CCTV footage in Jenners, did you get any further with that?’
‘Not from Jenners. I couldn’t get any further there. For whatever reason I can’t see them coming out of the shop. So I moved on to the second date when Jessica came up on her own. That has been a little more promising and a little odd.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, I have her going in and out of four shops along Princess Street, the last one being House of Fraser.’
‘Where about is that on a map Harry? Is that toward the Holyrood end of Princess Street or the Lothian Road end?’ I look at the clusters of dots on Rebecca’s map as I wait for an answer.
‘It’s down towards Lothian Road. Why do you ask?’
‘Just a hunch is all.’ I put the phone on mute and talk to Rebecca. ‘Harry has CCTV of Jessica down this end of the street.’ I say, pointing at the map, ‘That’s not far from the Lothian cluster. I think we should put your surveillance techniques to the test around there tonight.’ I suggest.
‘Hello John, are you there?’
‘Sorry Harry, I was just looking that up on a map here. Did you see her leave the store in any particular direction?’
‘No, I didn’t unfortunately, and that’s where it gets a little bit odd.’
‘Odd how?’
‘Well, odd in that the CCTV in that store is pretty damn good. I have her moving around the floors, I can even see what she is buying. Then she just disappears. I have no footage at all of her leaving the store and I have checked it all for the rest of the day.’
‘It’s not that odd. You couldn’t find her leaving Jenners either.’
‘No, sorry John, that’s not the odd thing.’
‘Oh, alright. What is the odd thing then?’
‘Do you recall this afternoon when the detectives took you away. The younger one, not the stern battle axe.’
‘DC Tait? What about her?’ I ask, perplexed, shrugging my shoulders toward an inquisitive Rebecca who was listening in on the call.
‘Well, I saw her on the CCTV coming out of the store about half an hour after Jessica went in.’
‘Okay, that could just mean that they both went shopping in the same store on the same day. Or it could mean that they were meeting each other?’ I po
ndered aloud.
‘Either are possibilities, but I have no footage of the two of them conversing or even passing close to each other. But even that isn’t the odd thing.’
‘That’s odd enough! So come on, what is the odd thing?’
‘The odd thing, and believe me I have checked and double checked, is that I can’t find any CCTV footage of DC Tait entering the store.’
Chapter 29
‘Sorry boys and girls, I know this is another late one but as you are no doubt aware from all of the press coverage on this today, our friends the ‘Fallen Angels’ don’t appear to be sleeping. So if they don’t sleep, we don’t sleep. It’s another day when we have been made to look like a bunch of amateurs. A day when the Superintendent has had to step in and invoke a Major Incident. A day when we have moved from enticement to incitement. And, I have to be brutal with all of us here, another day when we don’t have the first fucking clue. A Detective from out of the area who is signed off on the sick is having more success figuring this case out than we are!’
Cruickshank paced up and down in front of the evidence boards in the incident room, glaring out into the audience of tired, browbeaten Detectives with a look of simmering fury. She stabbed a finger vehemently into the latest set of pictures on the boards, those of Chodak, his victims and the ‘Fallen Angel’ who committed suicide.
‘Another mass murderer, another set of victims, another person dead and still no clues to point us in the direction of the ‘Fallen Angels’. McCalvey, have we had anything back from forensics on the search of Aira Lee’s apartment?’
DI McCalvey shuffled nervously in his chair and shook his head disconsolately. ‘Nothing at all Ma’am. It is spotless. There aren’t even any of her fingerprints. The only things in the place apart from a few bits of furniture were a painting in the kitchen and the photograph of Chodak in military fatigues along with the same man who was in the other two photographs of the killers. We still don’t have any ID on him.’
‘What about the fatigues? What army was Chodak fighting for?’
‘Another extremist group, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. They are a breakaway group who support Burmese government offensives against the predominantly Christian led Karen National Liberation Army.’
‘And GCHQ are certain they have never seen this man?’
‘Absolutely certain Ma’am.’
‘Okay. Well, keep searching. Tait, I want you to take a different tack with Bentley. Just confronting him with the evidence hasn’t worked, and by the way, you are probably the only one of us today that seems to have gathered some real leads, so well done. Is everyone else taking note?’ Cruickshank highlighted, looking disparagingly around the rest of the Detectives. ‘I want you to play the superior friend card now. Get in there and tell him what a bastard I am and how you realise there is no concrete evidence against him. Go all out with the empathy. Try to get him to confide in you. Not in an interview room. Keep it all off the record. Take him a cuppa in his cell. Can you do that?’
‘Yes Ma’am.’ Tait answered crisply, her eyes buoyed by the compliment Cruickshank paid, but her expression acutely embarrassed under the withering glances from her colleagues.
‘Good, now everyone, back to it. I have to prep with the Super now for tomorrow morning’s press conference and have to try and present a silk purse out of this pig’s ear of a case.’
Tait waited for everyone to leave, then slowly and thoughtfully followed them all out. She headed down the corridor to the tea room and picked up Bentley’s chipped Celtic mug, pouring coffee from the warming percolator into it. She looked around the empty room furtively, before slipped something into the coffee. She wandered down to the booking desk and smiled at the Duty Sergeant.
‘Evening Fred. Shankers wants me to have a chat with Bentley. I’m taking him a coffee. Is that okay?’
‘Just sign your name in blood and remember to yodel if he attacks you.’ Sergeant Calvey replied with a deadpan face.
Tait smiled as he led her down the row of locked cells and opened the door to Bentley’s. She walked in, Calvey locking the door behind her.
‘Behave yourself Bentley and remember Tait, yodel if he doesn’t.’ Calvey shouted through the observation hatch before slamming it shut.
Bentley was sitting against the wall on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands pushed deep into the pockets of the dirty raincoat he had pulled tight around him. His face was streaked with sweat and caked on blood, hair matted to his forehead. He was looking down at his lace-less, scuffed Doc Martins and didn’t look up to acknowledge Tait. She sat down on the floor next to him, putting her legs out straight as well and proffered him the coffee.
‘Peace offering.’ she said, simply.
Bentley took a hand out of his pocket and let it circle his mug, then raised it to his lips and took a long, lingering slurp of the dark, dense liquid, not once looking away from his boots nor offering any kind of gratitude.
‘Shankers asked me to come in and play the superior friend card on you. She wanted me to tell you that it was her making me ask the questions earlier. Told me to talk to you off the record, gain your confidence and see if I can wheedle out of you whatever it is you know.’ Tait said, speaking softly, with a hint of trepidation in her voice.
Bentley didn’t answer. He took another sip of coffee, then turned his head and looked into her wide, naïve blue eyes.
‘What the fuck’s going on Bentley. Did you really know what was happening between your dad and sister?’ Tait asked in a hushed voice brimming with incredulity.
His gaze dropped in embarrassment, looking back to the scuffs on his boots. The only sound in the cell was the slight wheeze of his breath and the crinkling of his raincoat as his chest rose and fell. They were augmented by a loud slurp as he took another gulp of coffee.
‘Yes, I really knew. Just as I really know that your boyfriend hits you. Just because you know something, it doesn’t automatically give you the right to have an opinion. It certainly doesn’t give you the right to interfere.’ he answered quietly, not looking from his boots once.
Tait’s jaw dropped in surprised panic, her bottom lip trembling as she tried to compose herself to speak. ‘He…’ she started but was immediately interrupted.
‘I don’t want you to defend him. That’s not why I said it. My point was, we all have lives behind closed doors. I can see you find the life behind my closed door disturbing. I could say the same about yours, but I don’t. I know it’s not something anyone would level at me, but I would like to think that I have a little empathy for the things people want to keep private. It’s only if you laud your life in front of me that I’ll rip you to shreds.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to judge, it’s just, well to be honest my gut reaction was shock. Shock that you knew.’
‘I understand that. Thanks for the coffee, you didn’t have to make a peace offering. You did a good job in the interviews earlier. If I had those facts, I would have done the same, but probably with a bit more fucking swearing.’
‘It didn’t break you though, so either there is nothing there to break, or you are one hard heartless bastard.’
‘Which one do you think it is?’ he said, a glimmer of a smile crossing his anguished lips.
‘I think it’s the far end of both. Something there to break, but with a big soft heart.’ she replied with candour.
‘Is that why you aren’t playing superior friend?’
Tait paused, her bottom lip trembling again as she gathered her composure. ‘You know, over the past few days working with you, you have been nothing but supportive. Challenging, bloody minded, belligerent and boorish, yes: but my overriding feeling is of being supported. I don’t want to be a boss. I don’t want to be superior. Right now I don’t even want to be a police officer. I just want to be a friend. Not because I think you haven’t done anything wrong. But because I think you have.’ she finished, fidgeting with her fingers as she looked openly at him.
Bentley stared at her for the longest of moments, taking in every aspect of her gaze. He looked back down at this boots and took another slurp of coffee.
‘I was thirteen when mum left. Dessie was just coming up to her sixteenth birthday. Father took it hard. In the space of a few days he lost his wife and his career. He knew it was his fault. He knew there was no one else to blame. But it didn’t stop him trying to blame someone else. I guess I was the one that got the brunt of that. Dessie is bipolar. When she is up, she is really up and when she is down: well. But she is good at controlling it, she know what helps to keep her up. What helped to keep her up back then was becoming Mum. She looked after us both, stepping in to do the cooking, the cleaning and the washing. Organising the two men of the house. She thrived and because he didn’t have to worry about anything other than himself, father did too. He found religion then as well, taking the Presbyterian stance that everyone is born a sinner, and as such is subject to God’s wrath and the punishment of death. By God, did he use that wrath on me, literally.’
‘Were they intimate, even back then?’
‘No. Please don’t think that father was a paedophile. That isn’t the case at all. Dessie became more than a Mum over time. Dessie wanted to be more than a Mum and Dessie can be very persuasive when she wants to be. She wanted to be a wife. She wanted to do everything a wife would do for her husband. She wanted to have a sexual relationship with father. For a long time he refused, but she wore him down. She was twenty. It was then they started helping out at support groups for domestic violence. Father felt it was something he could give back, to help atone for his sins. I think it also helped him reconcile the relationship he has with Dessie. I am worried for them. I think they may be scared and hiding.’
‘Hiding from what?’ Tait queried.
‘I told them someone was trying to set me up by involving people they had helped in the past. I think they are scared that if people start looking into our family, society will judge their relationship, just as you did.’ Bentley responded, eyes filled with sadness.