Blood Mist (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  She recognised a young mortuary technician from the crime scene at Sandy’s family home.

  On a wheeled trolley nearby was the shape of a man in a zipped body bag.

  ‘What do we know?’ asked Clay.

  ‘There was a crack in the ice, a hole with chunks of ice floating in it. The frogger accessed the water underneath, pulled the body out and brought him to the bank. Male, late teens, early twenties.’

  Clay stood over the body bag and pulled its zip down thirty centimetres.

  His eyes were open and startled, his lips parted against his teeth, which were clenched against the unforgiving cold. Black particles from the lake dotted his teeth like black stars against a white sky.

  ‘I’m giving up.’ Sandy’s words banged through her head like bullets.

  ‘This is Sandy Patel,’ she said. She blocked the swell of emotion and focused on practicalities. ‘Let’s get him to the mortuary.’ His face was wet, and dirty water dripped onto the bag’s shiny surface.

  ‘Six?’

  ‘Go round the neighbours’ and see if anyone’s got CCTV looking out onto the park entrance, or any other footage of anyone on Yewtree Road between eight and ten this morning.’

  She thought of the figure she’d glimpsed between the trees as she spoke with Sandy in the Linda McCartney Playground.

  ‘What was that, Eve?’

  ‘Make that seven. Something White said as I was leaving him.’

  34

  4.05 pm

  Shoe World’s warehouse was more than a cathedral to footwear. To Riley it was a corner of heaven.

  It was a cavernous place, its grey metallic walls lined with thousands of boxes of shoes under a vast high ceiling; stark fluorescent lights overhead and cold concrete floors underfoot.

  DS Gina Riley smiled as she turned a slow circle in the centre of the warehouse, the wall to the left piled high with shoe boxes, the back wall having its treasures added to, the right wall with its much smaller collection, boxes being loaded onto trolleys to be taken to the trucks waiting at the huge open doorway.

  ‘Pretty impressive, eh?’ said Barry Hill with a glow of pride.

  She’d nailed his physical size and attitude from their time on the phone, but his face wasn’t hard as she’d pictured. Barry Hill, for all his bluster, looked gormless, with curly hair that reminded her of a circus clown.

  A tall thin man in his late twenties emerged from a door tucked into the right-hand wall. He was dressed in a blue linen coat and moved awkwardly towards Riley as if walking was a newly acquired skill.

  ‘This is Rupert. He’s not right in the head,’ said Barry clearly and within the warehouseman’s hearing. ‘But he’s harmless.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Barry,’ said Riley. ‘You can go now.’

  ‘What?’ he laughed.

  ‘I want to talk to the man.’

  Barry glared at her before walking away, and she read his mind. Ungrateful cow!

  Rupert stopped, stood three metres away, indicated the air between them. ‘Personal space,’ he said. His voice was a little mechanical, but there was something childlike in his eyes.

  ‘I agree, Rupert, personal space is very important when dealing with new people.’

  ‘Can I see your warrant card?’

  She held the small white card out as far as she could and he said, ‘Perfect, Detective Sergeant Gina Riley. How can I help you?’

  She looked around at the thousands of boxes, each of which contained dozens of smaller boxes, and said, ‘I’m told you’re an expert on the subject of shoes.’

  ‘Yes, I am a world authority on that subject. I would like to go on Mastermind, but my general knowledge is laughable. And though I am not in a good mood, I will assist you in your investigation into shoes.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Rupert. What’s put you in a bad mood?’

  ‘This morning I took delivery of five thousand pairs of training shoes from our supplier in Fuzhou, south-west China. I opened the boxes to check the contents and to count them, of course, which is one of my many roles in the Shoe World Warehouse. They had only supplied four thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pairs. I had to go and see Mrs Milligan in the office to make a formal complaint.’

  A light went on inside Riley’s head. Rupert Baines? Asperger syndrome.

  ‘I can see that that amuses you, Detective Sergeant Gina Riley of the Merseyside Constabulary.’

  ‘I’m smiling because I think you can really help me out. I think the inaccurate supply of shoes was at worst dishonest and at best sloppy work.’

  ‘Yes, I agree with you.’ He stepped forward a couple of paces. She copied him.

  ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

  She stretched out her arm and he took her drawing of the reconstructed sole. He stared at it, looked over the top of the sheet at Riley, and looked hard again at the image.

  ‘Well,’ he said, at length. ‘It’s either a plimsoll or a trainer. What did you base the drawing on?’

  ‘On a partial footprint.’

  ‘In that case...’ He offered the sheet back.

  ‘You can keep the drawing, Rupert, but you mustn’t show it to anyone.’

  He touched his head. ‘I have a photographic memory.’

  She took it back. ‘What do you think, Rupert?’

  ‘It could be one of eighty-three types of casual shoe. I’ll have to check.’

  She looked around at the mountainous boxes. ‘Could you check it now, Rupert? I know this may take time, but I’d be most grateful, pretty please.’

  ‘Don’t soft-soap me, Detective Sergeant Riley. Yes, I will check now, but it could take many hours.’

  ‘My card.’ She handed it to him, he glanced at it, handed it back and rattled off the eleven digits of her mobile phone number.

  ‘I shall get back to you the minute I confirm my suspicions.’

  ‘What do you suspect, Rupert?’

  ‘Oh. Just about everything, Detective Sergeant Riley.’

  He stepped forward and held out his hand. She shook it, his hand warm and loose.

  ‘Have a safe journey home and, rest assured, you will be hearing from me.’

  ‘Thank you, Rupert, I look forward to that,’ she said to his departing back.

  ‘Fabriqué en Chine!’ he called, without turning, his voice echoing in the vastness of the warehouse.

  ‘Made in China?’ she replied.

  ‘As are most things in the world nowadays.’

  35

  4.45 pm

  The snow stopped suddenly as Clay parked on the white expanse of Kings Dock. A cold wind whipped from the river as she walked towards Liverpool One and the imposing brown block that was Merseyside Police Headquarters.

  She felt her phone vibrate in her hand but concentrated on getting across the road and onto the pavement outside HQ.

  ‘Eeeehh!’ A seven-year-old child shrieked as he was half-dragged to the other side by his mother.

  ‘Don’t look!’ she commanded. He ignored her.

  Clay followed his gaze. A seagull lay in the road, its white body and wings broken by the wheel of a car, its eyes open, staring up at the frozen sky. It put her in mind of deadness, of Adrian White’s eyes and his unfathomable, unblinking stare.

  She looked up. There was a chorus of screeching in the sky as a gathering of gulls circled overhead, calling out over and over what sounded like, Beware... Beware...

  Her phone stopped ringing.

  ‘When you look into shadows, you look into mirrors. When you look into mirrors, what do you see?’

  As the traffic throbbed at the red light to her left, she felt the glaring sodium lights above the broad lanes of tarmac beating back the darkness like cold fire. She clutched her coat at the collar, consumed by the memory of the burning room where she’d faced Adrian White and how her mind had blanked out as she shot through the wall of flame.

  On the other side of the flames, face to face with Adrian White. Darkness. He’d offered no
resistance as she cuffed his hands. The heat of a hundred fires burning. Darkness. Hands behind his back, she led him quickly down the stairs. Darkness. Running, dragging him with her as the burning building started to collapse behind them.

  The first words he spoke to her were now branded onto the surface of her brain, like the mark of a slave owner.

  ‘When you look into shadows, you look into mirrors. When you look into mirrors, what do you see?’

  She walked through the HQ’s front entrance and checked in with the civilian receptionist.

  ‘We’ve got what you’ve called for, DCI Clay,’ he said, stooping.

  He handed her a seventy-five-litre blue stacker box.

  ‘And I’m to tell you that everything else has been forwarded to your laptop at Trinity Road.’

  She lifted the stacker box and felt the weight of Adrian White’s three manuscripts inside. She recalled her first sight of them, as she led a raid into his nondescript terraced house on Nicander Road, and the mind-bending hours spent trawling through the obscure outpourings of his Satanic faith.

  The Matriarch.

  The Elemental.

  The label sellotaped to the lid of the box read simply: ‘Adrian White. Crime number: 0514335654’.

  The Beginning of the End of Time.

  Outside, as she walked within the incessant roar of the Dock Road traffic, it was as if being close to the documents peeled away layers of time. She remembered the curse at the end of The Elemental, the words White had spoken as he was led away to the cells.

  She found herself saying them, her breath condensing in the freezing air.

  ‘The Red Cloud will rise from the belly of the city and when the Red Cloud rises, the river will run with blood.’

  As she crossed back towards the Albert Dock, she peered over the top of the box. The dead gull was gone and the sky above was full of unfallen snow and silence.

  36

  5.01 pm

  Clay placed the stacker box into the boot and slammed the door shut, her arms aching from the three-hundred-metre walk. There was a foul taste in her mouth and she guessed it was from the puff of the cigarette she’d taken to help Sandy Patel bond with her. It felt like a lifetime ago.

  She closed the door against the bitter wind and looked out across the River Mersey at the illuminated tower of Birkenhead Town Hall and the Cammell Laird shipyard across the water on the Wirral. Behind her, the two cathedrals loomed against the thickening night sky like illuminated giants, houses of God with thousands of stained-glass eyes watching over the city.

  In a hurry to get back to Trinity Road, Clay turned on the ignition, but as she did so she was seized by the unsettling notion that she had overlooked something significant. In her head she retraced her walk from the car to HQ and arrived at the point when she was crossing the road and her phone was ringing out.

  She turned off the ignition and pulled her phone from her pocket.

  ‘You have one new voicemail message sent today at 4.47.’

  Clay waited.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Clay?’ It was a well-spoken young woman. ‘My name’s Coral Drake. You came to our house this morning to talk to my mum and my little sister Faith.’ In the background, Clay made out the sound of a ball bouncing. Wall. Floor. Bounce. Bounce. Silence. ‘I was wondering if we could either come and see you or you could come and visit us? Faith and I will be at home all day. I’d be grateful if you could get in touch. Or I’ll try you again later. Thank you.’

  Clay went to press 7 to delete the voicemail but stopped and instead called the Drake family’s number.

  Three rings later, a voice on the other end. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that you, Faith?’ She sounded much younger than she had face to face that morning.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay. Is your mother there, Faith?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is Coral there?’

  ‘Coral, it’s for you.’

  As she waited, Clay glanced back in the direction of HQ. In the time it had taken her to collect the stacker box, some animal lover had picked up the dead gull to place it in the relative dignity of the nearest public bin. An accident, she thought, and a small act of mercy. Nothing more, nothing less.

  ‘DCI Clay, thank you for calling back.’

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Faith’s remembered something. She wants to tell you something.’

  ‘Coral, are you going to be at home within the next half hour?’

  ‘We’ll be waiting for you, DCI Clay.’

  Thick flakes of ragged snow suddenly fell across Clay’s windscreen in a sharp diagonal line.

  The Baptist’s books weighed down the back of her car.

  An unnerving thought trespassed across her mind.

  Time was about to collapse.

  37

  5.03 pm

  There were fifty-three entries in Kate Patel’s address book. Detective Sergeant Karl Stone spoke with twenty-eight of the thirty-two within the Liverpool area. Four were dead lines. There were five families with children. And, in a call to Mrs Gillian Tanner, he had learned that there was one family with three children.

  Outside the Tanner family’s home on Ullet Road, at the back of Sefton Park, Stone parked half-on the pavement. The house was large, detached and well preserved, built for a wealthy Victorian ship owner in an era when Toxteth had been chic, elegant and the height of respectability.

  He walked through the wide stone gateway, the gravel path shifting underneath the snow. From behind the decorative stained-glass panels on either side of the red front door, lights glowed against the gloom of the winter afternoon. Stone wished he was at home curled up with a good movie on the Horror Channel.

  He rang the bell, smiled directly at the spy hole in the door and held his warrant card up so that whoever looked out could see it was a police officer.

  The door opened and a white-haired woman asked, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Gillian Tanner?’ He moved his warrant card a little closer. There was a disconnectedness about her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Karl Stone, Merseyside Police. We had a conversation on the phone half an hour ago...’

  Footsteps. A thin black woman in a navy blue nurse’s tunic stepped behind Mrs Tanner. The ID badge clipped to her breast pocket had a picture and her name. Cecilia Beaton.

  ‘Police?’ she said, examining his warrant card.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘I’m freezing,’ said Mrs Tanner, turning and walking back inside.

  ‘Come in,’ said Cecilia. ‘Have you come to see Gillian?’

  ‘Yes. She said she had three children.’

  ‘That’s right. I don’t know what you want, but I don’t think it’ll do you any good speaking to her.’

  ‘Is there another Mrs Tanner in the house?’ asked Stone, closing the front door and watching her turn into the front room. What he’d just seen and heard on the doorstep didn’t add up to the woman he’d spoken with on the phone.

  ‘There’s only one Mrs Tanner.’ Cecilia smiled and sighed. ‘And that’s more than enough.’

  ‘I’m confused,’ said Stone.

  ‘She has lucid moments, but they’re becoming fewer and further apart. Maybe I can help. I spend more time with her than her husband and kids. What do you want?’

  ‘Bring me a pair of shoes, trainers if possible, belonging to each of Mrs Tanner’s children please.’

  Nurse Beaton looked at Stone as if he was insane.

  ‘OK...’

  38

  5.06 pm

  Mrs Tanner stared into the fire burning in the grate and appeared to either be ignoring or have forgotten that Stone was sitting adjacent to her on the large red leather sofa.

  Stone looked at the soles of the trainers in spite of the fact that their sizes were 7, 5 and 4. The patterns were nothing like the diamond imprint on Mrs Patel’s body.

  Taking his
coffee from Nurse Beaton, Stone couldn’t remember the last time he’d been served a drink in a china cup and saucer.

  ‘How long’s Mrs Tanner had dementia?’ he asked.

  ‘Started about ten years ago. I’ve been with her for the past two.’

  ‘She sounded great on the phone.’

  ‘Little pockets of lucidity followed by exhaustion.’

  ‘Tell me again how old the children are?’

  ‘Seventeen, fourteen and twelve.’

  He looked around. There was neither sign nor sound of any adolescents in the house.

  ‘Becca and Dan, the oldest two, are out. In the park, so they say.’

  ‘The other child?’

  ‘Maisy’s in her room.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to play out in the snow?’

  Nurse Beaton shook her head. ‘Maisy doesn’t like the cold.’

  ‘What time did you come on duty this morning?’

  ‘Seven o’clock.’

  ‘Where were the children?’

  ‘Up and about. Their father’s a disciplinarian, insists they’re up before he leaves for work, doesn’t want them sleeping through the day.’

  Victorian ethos, Victorian home, thought Stone, taking in the room. Without the red leather suite, it could have been the set for a period drama.

  ‘Does Mrs Tanner ever talk about the past?’

  ‘She confuses the present with the past and the past with the present.’

  ‘Does she still have friends calling?’

  ‘No. People don’t see the point. She never has visitors. This is a very isolated family, Detective Sergeant Stone.’

  ‘Does she ever mention a family by the name of Patel?’

  A little light went on behind Nurse Beaton’s eyes.

  ‘Now that rings a bell,’ she said.

  He allowed her time and space, then prompted, ‘Kate and Hanif, the mother and father, Alicia—’

  Her face fell. ‘My God, the family in Aigburth? Mrs Tanner knows that poor family?’