Fearful Symmetry

by J. E. Mayhew

  A ruddy-faced, bearded reporter in a brown suit raised his hand. “Is it good to be in front of the cameras again, Detective Blake?”

  Blake cast a cold eye across him. “What d’you mean by that?”

  “I’m just curious how it makes you feel to have the eye of the public on you again after so long…”

  “It means nothing to me other than an opportunity to raise public awareness and bring us a step closer to bringing Ellen home. Does that answer your question?” The reporter shrank under Blake’s icy gaze. “Are there any other questions?”

  A harassed-looking woman with pointy glasses and her hair in a bun raised her hand. “Julie Irwin, Mirror Newsgroup, can you update us on the incident in Caldy, today, and can you tell us whether or not it’s related to the Hilbre Grove case?”

  Blake glanced over to Martin who raised his eyebrows. “At this moment in time, we’re unaware of any incident…”

  “But I’ve just been notified by our press office. One male dead at the scene. Identified as Ross Armitage. Shouldn’t we know what’s going on?”

  The noise level rose in the room as other reporters competed with each other to get their questions answered. Superintendent Martin stood up and raised his hands. “Please, please, can we have some calm and dignity here? Clearly, this is a dynamic situation and possibly an error. Give us time to get to the bottom of it and we’ll brief you just as soon as we know full details.”

  Blake followed Mrs Kevney and Martin out of the briefing room and wondered what the hell had just happened.

  *****

  The harder Ellen Kevney listened, the clearer the rumble of traffic became. She knew she was close to a major road. But where? It wasn’t constant, so she doubted it was the M53. Every now and then, a train clattered by and she wondered if it was the Wirral line. She tried counting between trains, but they weren’t that frequent, and her concentration drifted. It was so hard to think; she was starving, and she ached in every part of her body. She could be anywhere.

  Ellen pulled at the chains and handcuffs that chafed the skin on her wrists. If only she could break free. With a sigh, she slumped back down onto the cold metal floor. Some memories of the day she was taken had come back, leaving the club with Ralph and getting into the car. Then a weird series of images and memories; smells and sounds. A door slamming, blinding light, a man’s voice. The clang of the metal door. She cursed her stupidity. A rookie error, someone must have spiked her drink. She wondered about Ralph. What had happened to him? Had he been hurt defending her? Or worse? He must be dead; her captor had said as much.

  And what would become of her? She tried not to imagine them opening this container and finding her cold lifeless body. And she tried not to think of her children; their faces creased with sorrow.

  Panic seized and she tugged at the chains, rattling them through the welded eyelets that held them to the floor, but nothing happened. Her ears rang with the noise and she slumped down again, tears scalding her eyes. She couldn’t escape and sooner or later, he’d come back for her.

  Chapter 25

  Kinnear had jumped into his car as soon as Blake had given him the okay to check out Mark Skelly. He was glad to be out of the office. The case felt stuck and the frustration was palpable in that big room. People were snapping at each other and covering their backs. Whoever had Ellen Kevney was running rings around them and making them look stupid. It didn’t help that Blake’s past in Searchlight was mixed up in it. He knew how some of the others took the piss and he’d seen superior officers have a dig at Blake about it too. But he wondered if it hadn’t clouded Blake’s judgement.

  He inched his way through the city, stopping and starting at traffic lights. He passed the Rocket Pub, with its vintage steam train on the front, then merged onto the M62 and gave a murmur of thanks to the traffic gods as he speeded up.

  Mark Skelly lived in a small row of terraces in a run-down part of Widnes. Kinnear had a job parking at first but managed to squeeze the car between two clapped out Vauxhalls. The houses were brick built but painted rust red to protect them from the weather. Some of the paint had begun to peel and a layer of street grime coated the lower half of each house. The front doors opened straight out onto the street and every house had a satellite dish poking out of the wall. He found number sixteen and rapped on the white UPVC front door.

  It opened and a young woman, holding a toddler on her hip, looked Kinnear up and down. “What’s he done now?”

  “Sorry?” Kinnear stammered, taken by surprised.

  “Our Mark. What’s he been up to? You’re a copper, aren’t you?”

  Kinnear showed his warrant card. “I just want a quick word. Thought he might be able to help me clear up a few things.”

  She nodded back into the house. “He’s not here but if you see him, tell to come home. I need him to help me clear up a few things here, too.” She went to shut the door, but Kinnear edged forward.

  “I can’t tell him, if I don’t know where to look for him, can I?” Kinnear raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, he’ll be in the One O’clock Gun about now, I wouldn’t wonder.” The door slammed in Kinnear’s face.

  The One O’clock Gun was a small street corner pub a few streets away. Kinnear imagined it would be one of those places that would fall silent the moment he set foot in it and he was right. It smelt of disinfectant and booze. A small huddle of red-faced, bullet-headed gorillas sat around a table. There wasn’t much room for anything else in there apart from the mahogany bar which pressed itself against one wall.

  Kinnear flashed his warrant card. “Hi, I’m looking for Mark Skelly…” He hadn’t finished the sentence when one of the identical drinkers broke from the ranks and barged past him, slamming him into the wall and blasting the breath from his lungs.

  Gasping, Kinnear staggered forward. “That’ll be… him, I… expect…”

  “Aye, that’s our Mark,” one of the lads grinned.

  “Thanks,” Kinnear said and bolted out of the door.

  Mark Skelly was light on his feet and had already made his way to the corner, obviously heading for home. Kinnear yelled after him. “Mark stop! I only want to talk to you!”

  The only reply was the pounding of Skelly’s feet on the pavement. “Have it your own way, then,” Kinnear muttered and speeded up, wishing he’d been better at fending off offers of digestive biscuits all these years. He sprinted after Skelly, the blood pounding around his temples. Skelly nipped down a side alley and Kinnear followed, skidding to a halt when the alley looked empty.

  Panting for breath, Kinnear crept along the alleyway. It had turned into a wider passage that ran behind the houses. Each house had a small yard surrounded by a high wall. Gates punctuated the alley wall. Skelly had obviously leapt through one of these and was either hiding or had escaped through a house into the front. “This is ridiculous,” Kinnear muttered.

  A bin clattered over in front of him and Skelly broke from the cover of a gateway. Cursing and clambering over the fallen bin, Kinnear grabbed at him, fingers grazing Skelly’s flannel shirt. He jumped up and sprinted again, this time gaining on Skelly and committing to a bone-crunching rugby tackle.

  *****

  For the second time in twenty-four hours, Blake found himself on the doorstep of Bramble Cottage. The circumstances couldn’t have been more different, though and Blake found himself musing about how so much could change in such a short time. Life could be snuffed out in the blink of an eye; a whole life could change with the arrival of bad news. He knew that himself only too well.

  DS Chinn stood beside him, sensing his hesitation at the threshold of the house. “You okay, sir?” she said.

  Blake smiled at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks, Vikki. I never really liked Ross Armitage, but I’d never wish this on him.”

  “You don’t have to go in, sir,” Vikki said.

  “Yeah, I do.” Blake pulled on the face mask and trudged through the door.

  From the inside of the hou
se, it was clear that Ross Armitage’s career was stalling. The old, Cheshire sandstone house hadn’t changed since Blake had last been here. The only changes were those caused by a decade of neglect. An expanse of dusty, laminate flooring stretched across the hall and into the living room. Faded pictures of Ross’s glory days hung on the wall; Armitage shaking hands with Ricky Gervais, on a TV studio sofa with Phillip Schofield, and a magazine shot of him in a red convertible with Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Evans. They clashed with the dark panelling and period furniture which looked tired and old. Thick curtains gave the room a twilight, underwater quality. Crime Scene Investigators busied themselves around the room, taking photographs and dusting for prints.

  The man himself sprawled on an enormous, threadbare sofa. If it wasn’t for the scissors poking from his left eye, Blake might have thought he was watching the massive TV that filled the old stone hearth. Blood from his gaping throat stained his track suit and the sofa. A single drop had reached the tip of his finger, congealing before it could drop onto the floor. A thousand memories of Ross Armitage flashed through Blake’s mind: Ross in his dark suit, holding forth in front of the camera, Ross grinning after some stupid practical joke during rehearsals. He might have been an unpleasant individual, but he didn’t deserve this. Blake grimaced. “Jeez,” he muttered. “Poor bugger.” This is all my fault, Blake thought. If I hadn’t come here last night, this would never have happened.

  Mallachy O’Hare grunted. “Are you trying to work me into an early grave, Blake?” he said. “I barely slept last night and now this.”

  “It’s our Hilbre Grove man, you reckon?”

  Mallachy pointed at the scissors. “Unless there’s a sudden craze for doing that, I’d say so. We’ve got some footprints at the back door. The killer didn’t really cover his tracks.”

  “Did he break in?”

  “Looks like he used a bump key on the back-door lock. Surprised Armitage didn’t hear it.”

  Blake looked down at the celebrity’s ruined face and then to the phone that lay on the sofa next to Armitage. “Maybe he was too absorbed with himself.”

  “Perhaps,” Mallachy said. He nodded to the wall. “I’m guessing that’s for you.”

  Blake looked at the wall behind him and his heart sank. Painted in huge red capitals, the message filled the blank space. Blake knew the lines off by heart. It was the one poem that was endlessly parroted to him; or at least the first couple of lines. He’d memorised the whole thing as a teenager.

  Tyger Tyger burning bright,

  In the forests of the night:

  What immortal hand or eye,

  Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

  “William Blake,” Mallachy said. “‘Fearful symmetry.’ What does that mean?”

  Blake shrugged. “I always thought it was something to do with the stripes. You know, they’re symmetrical.”

  “It’s the contrast,” a quiet voice said. Blake turned round to see Callum, the new CSI. Blake thought of him as new, but he’d been in post a few months now. If he was in need of experience, then these last few weeks would certainly have stood him in good stead. “In the poem, there’s mention of the Lamb, which is God, the creator. The tiger is created by God but it’s destructive and terrifying.”

  “So, the poet is asking how God could create such a creature?”

  Callum shrugged. “Sort of. I think it’s more the symmetry of the world, a kind of duality. Innocence and experience, good and evil, war and peace…”

  “God! Let’s hope next time he writes that one on the wall; we’ll be sure to catch him. It’ll take him all night, eh?” Mallachy said. “War and Peace…” Mallachy gave a dry chuckle and squatted down at the corpse’s right foot to examine something.

  Blake scowled at him and then turned to Callum. “So, the poet is saying there’s a symmetry to the world…”

  “Yeah, I did it in an Arts enrichment course at Uni,’” he said. “We had to do them in addition to any Science or Technology. I quite liked it. Whoever wrote that thinks he’s half of something…”

  “And I’m the other half?”

  Callum shrugged. “Bit of a leap. Maybe he sees himself as a hunter and his victims the prey, or something.” An awkward silence filled the air between them. “Anyway. I better get on.”

  Blake stared at the writing. “What the hell’s he going to do next, Vikki?” he muttered, Looking out of the window. An officer in a hi-vis jacket walked across the rear lawn towards the imposing sandstone wall that encircled the grounds. Blake peered at the man. “Is that a copper, Vikki?”

  Vikki Chinn stood beside him. “Yeah. It’s a PCSO, sir.”

  “He looks familiar.”

  The PCSO paused at the gate, stared straight at them, and gave a brief wave.

  “It’s the officer from Hilbre Grove, sir,” Vikki said.

  “Seems like a spare part,” Blake muttered. “Why’s he wandering across the lawn like that? He looks like he’s sight-seeing.”

  “I dunno, sir.”

  “I hope I’m imagining things, Vikki,” Blake muttered, a horrible realisation dawning on him. “Quickly, let’s go and have a word. I’ve a bad feeling about our PCSO out there.”

  They hurried through the hall and into a large conservatory that led into the garden. The PCSO stood across the long garden, fiddling with a small gate set into the rear wall. Hearing their footsteps, he turned, his cap pulled down low so that the peak covered his eyes and the collar of his hi-vis jacket turned against the February cold. But Blake could see glittering dark eyes and a thin black beard and recognised him instantly.

  “It’s him, Vikki! It’s Ralph!”

  Vikki sprinted across the lawn, but the man was already pulling the garden gate closed behind him. She tugged at the gate as Blake caught up with her, but it wouldn’t move. “He’s locked it from the outside, sir.”

  Blake grabbed at the top of the wall, his shoulders and upper arms burning as he pulled himself up. A car door slammed, and he just glimpsed the top of a white van disappearing down the lane. “Call for a car. There must be one nearby. See if they can head him off at the top of that lane.” He lowered himself back down and massaged his aching shoulder. Vikki yelled into the radio.

  “We’ve lost him, Vikki. He was bloody watching us. laughing at us from day one. How the hell did he manage to hang around the crime scenes dressed like that?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Vikki Chinn said and carried on barking orders into the intercom.

  “I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid! I bet he’s the one Pleavin has been talking to all this time. Tom Dacre. Jeez!” Blake’s phone rang.

  “Blake,” Superintendent Martin’s voice was clipped. “I need you back here. Immediately.”

  “I’m just…”

  “Right now.”

  “Yes sir,” Blake said, ending the call. “Shit.”

  Chapter 26

  Kath Cryer had always hated hospitals. They were full of sick people for a start and she always worried that she’d pick something up. Now, as an added bonus, they reminded her of her own brush with death only a few months ago and that always brought her up short. Before coming to see Dot Taylor, she had to sit in the car and take several long, slow, deep breaths and let the memories pass. She wondered if she’d ever forget the roar of the shotgun, the pain and the sudden strange detachment from the world as she fell back.

  She sat, smoothing the straps of her splint out again and again. It was only when she woke up in hospital that the shock really hit her. There’d been no lasting damage, apart from her wrist. She’d done what any other copper would have done; she saw a mate in danger and reacted. It wasn’t as if Kinnear was ungrateful, the opposite, really. Nothing was too much trouble; she was getting a bit tired of it, to be honest. It made her feel vulnerable. She hadn’t been tested yet, but Kath worried that next time she was confronted with a knife attack or a gun, she’d freeze. Maybe that was the best thing to do anyway; rash heroics weren’t conducive to
a long life.

  Dot Taylor lay buried in covers on her hospital bed. She stared across the ward at the bed on the other side, but Kath knew that Dot couldn’t really see it. Poor old Dot was reliving those last moments when she shuffled out of normal life, where bad things only happened on the news, into a world of madness, blood and insanity.

  “Mrs Taylor?” Kath said, gently. “I’m DI Cryer. I wondered if I could have a word. If you feel up to it?”

  “Who’d do a thing like that?” Dot whispered. “I’d just come back off my holidays.”

  “Can you think of anyone?”

  Dot looked up at Kath. “Can you?”

  Kath raised her eyebrows. She couldn’t. She had seen a few killings in her time; usually committed in the height of anger or passion. Others had been cold-blooded executions, criminals punishing other criminals, marking territory, that kind of thing. She’d even seen a few ‘ripe’ corpses and ones that had been in water for a while. But someone killing with no apparent reason and then leaving the body to be found in that manner. “No,” she admitted. “No. I can’t. We have some leads. Have you ever heard of a man called Ralph Vaughan?”

  Dot shook her head. “We’d just had a lovely holiday. Won a competition and everything. Three weeks in Cape Verde. I thought that, what with everything we’ve been through, Dave’s health scares, and our money-worries, that we deserved this. I wish we’d never gone now. That was our home. The one safe place.”

  Kath frowned. This wasn’t the time to interview Dot and she was pretty certain that the poor old woman didn’t know anything that would help them. Dot needed to talk to someone who could help her through this darkness and Kath wasn’t that person. “Mrs Taylor. Dot. I’ll come back later, okay?”

  Dot grabbed Kath’s hand. “I don’t want to go home. Don’t make me go back there…”

  “I’ll have a word,” Kath said. She turned and saw a young man standing by the ward door. He wore a dark hoodie and had lank red hair. A look of shock spread across his freckled face and he turned to run.