by Tania Carver
Having found her face he kept staring at her. Breathing heavily, each long ragged inhalation and exhalation sounding like a bull waiting to charge.
Eventually he found his voice.
‘This is unfair. You know that? Unfair.’
She said nothing. Waited for him to continue.
‘What happened to me. All of it. All unfair.’
Again she didn’t reply. She wasn’t sure what to say, how to engage him. She waited to hear more, get a sense of where he was going. Find some words then to defuse him.
‘It was her, not me. Her. I just… I did… I did nothing. Her. All her.’ Looking away from Marina as he spoke. Looking all round the room as if seeing ghosts.
‘All who, Michael?’
He found Marina’s face again. Gave another snort. ‘You just want the name, don’t you? Just give you a name and then you’ll go. Pay me like a whore. And all that bullshit you told me’ll be just that. Bullshit.’
‘Help me here, Michael. Please. Tell me what you’re talking about. Who you’re talking about.’
‘You know who…’ The words roared at her.
Marina jumped, startled. And also scared.
‘No respect… no fucking respect…’
Marina stood up. ‘I’ve had enough of this, Michael.’ Hoped her voice was stronger, less fearful, than she felt. ‘I’m going.’
She made a move towards the door.
And with a speed he didn’t look like he possessed, he was on her.
‘You’re not going fucking anywhere…’
His hands round her throat, squeezing hard.
Marina felt the room going black.
42
Daylight was completely gone, darkness in full force when Imani pulled up outside Prentice’s Garage in New Town. The place wasn’t lit, the double doors closed. It confirmed her bad feeling: it didn’t look right.
Still, she got out of the car and made her way over to the doors. Wary, looking round all the while. She reached them, placed her hand on one. It opened. A good sign or a bad one? She didn’t know. Nervous but trying to hide it, remembering her training, she pushed it open and, with a final look up and down the street, entered.
The garage floor was in darkness. She could make out a light in the overhead office, a desk lamp, she thought, given it was small and localised.
‘Mr Prentice?’
No reply.
She looked round, her eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom, able to pick out shapes, grey against darker grey. There was a car in front of her on the hydraulic ramp. It seemed to be higher at one side, the other flat on the ground. She moved forwards, stumbled over two wheels which she hadn’t seen.
‘Mr Prentice?’ she called again.
Again, no answer.
Right, she thought, turn around. Walk away. Get backup. Something’s happened here. She didn’t know what, but she knew it wasn’t good.
She stepped backwards and slipped, almost falling over. She reached out, steadied herself against a work bench, took out her iPhone, operated the flashlight. Pointed it downwards.
Her heart skipped a beat. What she assumed was oil, the substance she had slipped in, wasn’t. It was as thick but more congealed, a different colour. Blood.
Right. Definitely get out of there.
She should have done. But she had to have one more look around. Perhaps Prentice had hurt himself, needed her help. Accidents happened.
She swung the flashlight again. And saw what was holding up the car on the hydraulic lift, what was making it appear lopsided. A body was trapped underneath it. She couldn’t make out much but it was wearing the same overalls that Roger Prentice had been wearing.
‘Oh God…’
She stepped backwards, trying to avoid the pooled blood once more, thinking: crime scene. Preserve it. Get out. Call for backup.
‘I’m afraid Mr Prentice won’t be joining us. He had a pressing engagement.’ Then a laugh. Loud. Hard. ‘Sorry, couldn’t resist. I know I shouldn’t make jokes and that but… what can you do?’
She looked to where the source of the voice was coming from, knowing immediately who it was even without seeing the speaker.
‘Beresford.’
‘Yeah.’ He stood at the top of the steps in front of the office, body silhouetted against the dim light, making him seem bigger, more intimidating than he actually was. Or that’s what Imani told herself. Beresford was already big and intimidating.
‘You’re cleverer than I thought, DS Oliver. Or maybe just more suspiciously minded. But you’re also thicker too.’
‘In what way?’
‘You came here, didn’t you?’
Her heart skipped a beat. Part of her couldn’t believe this was happening. The man was a copper. Had he really killed a garage owner?
‘Did you do that?’ she asked, pointing to what was left of Roger Prentice.
‘Yes it was me. No point lying now. He should have kept his mouth shut like I told him to. Should have said what I told him to say.’
‘That your car was in his garage.’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded, the light glinting off his bald head. He made no attempt to come downstairs. ‘Dunno what he was playing at.’
‘So you killed him.’
‘I didn’t mean to. But we got into a conversation. Well, an argument, really. And he said he would do it again if he had to.’
‘You had some kind of hold over him. Helped him out with something?’
‘Yeah. He’s a bit of a lad, is our Roger. Likes them young, shall we say. Got into trouble a few years ago. I made it go away.’
‘He was a paedophile? And you covered for him?’
‘Greater good, and all that. He was a good contact to have. A good informant. Let me know what was going on in his shitty little world. He wasn’t as bad as some of them. Didn’t act on his impulses. But he passed on quite a bit of stuff.’ He looked down at the body. Sighed. ‘Shame, really. Could have used him a bit more. But needs must, and all that.’
Imani stood still, taking everything in. It was like her world had tilted, tectonic plates shifted and the ground wasn’t where it used to be. She tried to rationalise, focus. She turned, looked at the door. It was still slightly ajar. She could make a run for it. Find Matthews, tell him everything. Franks too. Get everyone —
Matthews.
‘He told you, didn’t he?’
‘Who?’
‘Simon Matthews. He told you I was looking into you. Into your car.’
‘He’s a good lad, Simon. Knows which side his bread’s buttered on.’
She looked at the door once more. Edged slightly towards it.
‘Why?’
Beresford laughed. ‘Oh, is this where I tell you my evil plan, is that it?’
‘I don’t know, have you got one?’
Beresford sighed. ‘I’m not the bad guy here. Really, I’m not. I’m a bloody good copper. I’m not bent, I don’t take backhanders. I catch villains. And I’m bloody good at it.’
‘So why have you killed Roger Prentice?’
Another sigh. ‘Too complicated to tell you.’
‘And what about Phil Brennan? You kidnapped him, I take it?’
‘Yeah, I did.’
‘And you’ve been trying to derail the investigation. Your investigation. Why?’
‘Like I said, you wouldn’t understand. Complicated.’
‘Try me.’
‘She’s got my kid. My wife too.’ Traces of fear broke through the bravado.
‘Who? The woman who has Phil?’
‘Yeah. And I’ve got to…’ Another sigh. ‘You do anything to protect your family, don’t you?’
‘But you don’t have to do this,’ said Imani. ‘We’re all on the same side. All the things you’ve discovered in this investigation, if you put it all together we could find her. Stop her. Bring your family back to you.’
A harsh laugh. ‘You think I haven’t considered that? Really? It was the first thing I thought. An
d the first thing she thought of too. That’s why she said if I brought her in or stopped her I’d never see them again. She’s keeping them somewhere that I can’t get to. And if we brought her in she’d let them die.’
‘She might be bluffing.’
‘You got kids? Anyone?’ Voice raised, shouting now.
‘No, no I haven’t.’
‘Then you don’t understand. You’d never say that if you had.’
‘Look,’ said Imani, turning away from the front door, making her way up the steps towards Beresford. ‘Just stop it. Now. We can find Phil, bring her in. We’ll get your wife and kid back. All of us. Together. Because we’re a team. That’s how we work, that’s what we do.’
Another laugh, even harsher this time.
She moved further up the steps until she was right beside him. He was sweating, great droplets running down his shining head. His eyes looked like they’d been caught in headlights and he didn’t know which way to run. He was twitching, desperate-looking.
‘Come on,’ she said, reaching out to him. ‘We can sort this out. We can —’
The breath was knocked from her. Beresford picked her up, threw her over the stairs.
She didn’t have time to think. Didn’t have time to react.
All she had time to do, as her body hit the hard concrete floor, her head connecting with the corner of a metal workbench as it went down, nearly severing it, breaking her neck in the process, was die.
PART FIVE
LET IT ROLL
After The First
After Sean, killing came quite easy. Not that she did it straight away. Not at first.
She didn’t go to university. Decided she didn’t want to be with Fiona – couldn’t be with Fiona. That was gone, broken. And with that, when she thought about it, there wasn’t really anywhere else that she wanted to go. Or anything to study. So she left the children’s home. Just walked out one day, never looked back.
She stayed in Chelmsford at first. Not because she had any particular fondness or attachment to the place, but because she still knew a few people. The gangs she handed the girls to from the home. She told one of the boys, Leon, that she wanted somewhere to stay. He found her a room in a shared house at the cheaper end of town. She knew it. She’d taken girls there for parties. It wasn’t what she had in mind to live in.
It was OK at first, she thought. She quite enjoyed the parties, the access to pills and cocaine, booze and weed. And if she wanted to lose herself in sex there was always someone available: male, female, whatever. But it began to get her down quite quickly. Years of living in the home, sharing everything – especially space – made her want somewhere of her own. And she was also tiring of the whole scene. So young, she thought with a smile, so jaded.
But there was something else about the whole thing too. She could see herself falling down that rabbit hole, being swallowed up by the life she was living. Booze and pills and sex. She was hitting all three hard. Harder than she had ever been. Especially the sex. She wasn’t just fucking the girls and boys, she was hurting them. Couldn’t get off until they were crying. And that wasn’t going down well with some of the boys in the gang. Not because they didn’t like what she was doing – objectively they couldn’t have cared less. But just by doing it she was damaging their merchandise. And that wasn’t on.
Sometimes, when she was hitting one of the girls, really hitting her, until she was covered in blood, cowering and crying in a corner of some shitty room, screaming while she did it, she had a kind of out-of-body experience. She could look down on herself, see herself doing this. And she would see her face. No longer human. Just an animal baying and howling with rage, in pain.
Her walls were gone. Drugs, drink and everything else had battered them down. The sex was her only way of coping and that in itself wasn’t enough. Because it wasn’t keeping her controlled, it was becoming more and more excessive. And the highs were getting harder to reach, the comedowns of comfort harder to maintain, shorter in duration. She had to do something.
So she took herself off for a while. Went somewhere to think. Decide what she was going to do next. She had money. Or a bit of it, anyway. Saved from her years of pimping out girls. But it wouldn’t last forever. She knew that. It didn’t need to, though. Just long enough until she decided what she was going to do next.
She stayed in hotels. Meditated. That was something they had been encouraged to try in the home. A teacher had come in and tried to show them. It’ll help you cope, she had said, show you ways to get through your days when it’s all getting on top of you. Most of the kids had laughed, arsed around, predictably enough. But she had listened, taken it in. Practised it. On her own, of course. When no one was looking. And it did work.
So that was what she did now. In her hotel room. Looked inside herself, built that wall up again brick by brick. Told herself she didn’t care about Fiona any more. And that she didn’t care about what she’d done to Sean. That it was all in the past. That she was a new person.
The first time she confronted all that, the real first time, delving down, down inside her, she opened her eyes to find herself in floods of tears. Crying for her lost love. Crying because she had caused someone else’s death. But she didn’t carry that through with her when she came out of her meditative state. Quite the opposite. She felt calm, happy, even. For the first time in years, possibly the only time ever. At peace. All that had gone. And she could look forward to the future.
After that, her future came to her accidentally.
Despite not going to university, she still wanted to learn things. After all, her school had judged her to have an above-average intelligence and a temperament that would become easily bored and restless if not put to good use.
So she read. Widely and indiscriminately. Anything and everything. Devouring, accumulating knowledge, learning all the while.
It happened one night. A Holiday Inn somewhere up north. She couldn’t remember where. Somewhere anonymous. That was the important thing. There was some kind of gathering going on in the bar. She sat there on her own, reading, drinking. Rebuffing offers from the local lotharios. Not that she was saving herself or had saved herself; there was just no one there she could be bothered to have sex with. They were all too boring. Also she didn’t like taking them up to her room. Even though it was temporary, rented, it was still her own space. And she didn’t like anyone to invade it.
She had just about finished her gin and tonic, ready to go up to bed, when this group of people came in. She couldn’t make them out at first. They were mostly middle-aged, dressed in evening wear, a mixture of both sexes. All drunk or at least tipsy, all having had fun somewhere and not wanting it to end. And the one surprising thing: they were all masked.
Some were simple Burt Ward as Robin types, some were elaborate creations. But everyone wore one.
She was intrigued. Suddenly she didn’t want to finish her drink and go to bed. She wanted to know where they had all been. She went up to the bar. They were all clamouring to be served but she found a space for herself. A drunk middle-aged man would always allow a pretty young girl to be served first. Sometimes they would even buy her drinks.
I’ll get that, said a voice.
She turned. He was tall, rounding out but she could tell he had been handsome once. Clearly he still thought he was. She had watched him as he entered with the rest of them. Some of the women obviously agreed with his assessment of himself. It was no accident she ended up standing next to him.
Gin and tonic please, she said, not even bothering to pretend she didn’t want him to. No time for that lame trick.
He got her her drink. She thanked him, took a mouthful, letting him see the way she sucked on her straw.
So what’s this all about, then? The masks.
You want one? he asked and produced one from his pocket, tied it on her.
Always carry a spare, he said.
She smiled, allowed him to tie it. It had a satin ribbon at the back. He stood
back, admired his handiwork.
Lovely.
So what’s it for, then? she asked again.
He smiled. A special party. You see that film Eyes Wide Shut?
She hadn’t.
Oh. Well, like that.
You mean a sex party?
Now you’re getting it.
She looked round at all the rest of them. So why come here?
This is where we’re all staying. Or most of us. We’ve had our fun. If we want to continue, we do it here.
Must make breakfast a bit difficult.
He laughed, as if that was the funniest thing he’d heard all night.
She kept smiling at him. So, she said, do you want the fun to continue?
He did. He definitely did.
It was as easy at that.
She didn’t know she was going to kill him. Not at first. She thought she would just fuck him. Maybe tie him up, keep him restrained while she went through his wallet. But one thing led to another…
He was a surprisingly good lover. He knew how to make her respond. Most men didn’t, in her experience. And she enjoyed being with him. At times she even lost herself in what was happening. And that was dangerous. She had made that agreement with herself that she would never lose control of herself again. She couldn’t allow that to happen. Not even with this man. Not even if she was enjoying herself. And, she was amazed to admit to herself, she was.
But all good things had to come to an end.
She was in his room, still wouldn’t allow him back to hers. He had come well equipped for his night of fun. His bag contained all manner of toys. They had worked through most of them together. She now had him tied to the bed, face down. Ready to use on him the strap-on dildo he had so thoughtfully provided. But she stopped. Looked at his back.
She had read something in one of her recent studies. A blade, even a small one, a stiletto, perhaps, between the right vertebrae could paralyse a person. She had brought a long hatpin bought just for this. She’d been practising on an anatomical model that she’d bought online from a medical supplies shop. But just in case it didn’t work first time, the Rohypnol that she’d slipped into his drink would have taken effect by now.