Jess Castle and the Eyeballs of Death

by M B Vincent

  How she wished that was true. But no.

  ‘You gave me your assurance – now worthless, apparently – that you were addressing your situation at Cambridge. Then, by virtue of a deeply embarrassing encounter with your superior when he presented himself at my door, I discover my faith in you has, yet again, been misplaced. The very least you could have done was give Max some sort of explanation for your desertion. Instead you hid, and you lied. For two whole bloody weeks, you skulked around the house feeling sorry for yourself, shoehorning your way into a murder enquiry that has nothing to do with you—’

  ‘That’s not fair! Eden—’

  ‘DS Eden is a perfectly capable police officer who does not need the assistance of a failed history lecturer with the temperament of a child. And while we’re at it, even if it weren’t fair, what entitles you to justice after the disgraceful way you treat the people around you? How do you manage to crash through life believing that fairness only need run one way? You have an endless capacity for taking what you want, making demands this way and that, but the moment any pressure is applied to you, you become inert, whingeing about unreasonable expectations and—’

  ‘Enough!’ Jess threw up her hands. ‘I’m not putting up with any more Jessica-bashing. Yes, I fucked up, and before you say anything, I’m giving myself permission to swear. I feel terrible about what I’ve done. You don’t have to explain my own shortcomings to me. I feel them keenly every day. I have nightmares about the situation. I let down the department, the students, and, worst of all, Max. And you know what? Max was disappointed. And he was sad. But he didn’t perform a character assassination on me. I’m sorry I’m not another Stephen, I’m sorry I didn’t do a fucking law degree, and I’m sorry I ran away. I’m particularly sorry Mum’s dead because at least I’d have someone in Harebell House who loves me even though I’m crap.’ Jess’s voice cracked. ‘However crap I am, I’m still Dr Jessica Castle and not some legal secretary you get to push around. As far as these murders are concerned, Dad, I’m useful. Shock horror, Jess is useful for once! You’re right. DS Eden is a perfectly capable police officer who happens to find my expert opinion valuable, so put that in your tweed fucking Victorian pipe and smoke it.’

  Jess unbuckled and clambered out. Ready to stomp away, she stopped and turned to put her head through the open window.

  ‘And don’t worry, I’ll protect you from Patricia Smalls at the grand opening tomorrow.’

  The silence throbbed. The Judge said nothing.

  A first.

  Back in her room, Jess sat on the floor and leant against the side of her bed. She tried to enjoy the emergency Scotch egg she’d found. The doughty garage snack wasn’t working its usual magic.

  Everything Jess wanted was beyond her reach. She wanted Mary. She wanted to talk to Rupert. Any rapprochement with her dad was officially over. The symbols lay, inscrutable, on her bedside table.

  Moose snored, taking up the bed as ‘Wooden Heart’ warbled on her turntable. At least she had Moose, she thought. And Elvis. The King never let her down.

  But what Jess really craved was something she could never have again. What she wanted more than anything was her mother.

  The normals had it in for him. They didn’t know how to see, how to look. They were blind. All the care he took with the boxes and no one appreciated him. He put love into the boxes. There was no other word for it.

  Love.

  Sex had brought power. Made a leader out of him. He had been transformed through sex and death. This new life was exhilarating.

  The dead ones were proud. They knew he’d listened and learnt. They knew he did his best. That wasn’t enough for him anymore. He wanted everybody to know the amazing things he was capable of.

  This time, the newspaper people would put his box on the front page where it belonged. The box would be found out in the open. He almost felt sorry for whoever found it.

  Chapter 19

  AN AREA OF HIGH PRESSURE

  Saturday 28 May

  Jess’s first full shift at the charity shop began at 9 a.m. Despite the lack of payment or perks or basic respect, Doug and Richard demanded punctuality from their staff. Sleep still in her eyes, Jess left Harebell House under a cloud both literal and spiritual. The Judge had taken care not to cross her path since their frank exchange of views the evening before, and a grey mass of cotton wool cloud trembled over the peak of Gold Hill.

  She didn’t go back for an umbrella. She took her chances with the rain. A walk, she thought, might clear her head.

  Kidbury Road.

  The bridge.

  The long-stay car park.

  The medical centre.

  The vet’s.

  And then the long turn into the main thoroughfare.

  Turned out her head was un-clearable.

  A police car passed her. A yellow and blue blur. Then another. The town firmed up ahead of her. Bell Street was busy. Too busy for the hour of day.

  Gossiping clusters impeded her path. Jess nodded hello to Carli, who had buttonholed Helena and Meera. She passed Graham Dickinson, hurrying towards the vet’s with Shakespeare in a pet carrier. The cat farted as they passed.

  Something was in the air. The excitement bit at Jess. She felt ashamed that murder was her new safe place, but it did take her mind off, well, things.

  Crime scene tape stretched from the minimart to Rupert’s chambers on the edge of the market square.

  ‘Sorry, love.’ The red-headed policeman barred her way. ‘You’ll have to go round.’

  ‘Why?’ Jess peered into the square. The centre was screened off with what looked like massive windbreaks. ‘Is it to do with the murders?’

  ‘Move along, now,’ said Red.

  Jess moved along, scurrying down an alley that let her out onto Parson’s Lane. Past St Luke’s. A left onto the narrow street that housed the chemist’s. She peered in. Mr Kuzbari seemed lost in thought, arms wrapped around himself, staring into the middle distance.

  She almost knocked. St Luke’s clock chiming nine reminded her of her duties.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Richard. His neckerchief was tartan this morning. His hair, newly dyed, reminded Jess of orangeade.

  ‘Only by two minutes.’

  ‘Only, she says.’ Richard was scandalised. ‘Sort through those donation bags, missy, and less of your only.’

  Plastic bags leant on one another by the counter. Jess set to. A nylon nightie. A very old bra. Three polo necks. Much of it fit only for the bin. Jess remembered her mother saying that customers mistook the charity shop for a waste disposal unit. ‘Can we sell these?’ She held up a pair of outsize frilled knickers that, to put it kindly, had seen better days.

  ‘Ooh yes!’ Doug swept down the stairs from the flat. All in black. Spidery. ‘I have a regular customer who’ll take them.’ He took the panties and stowed them behind the till. ‘He’ll be very grateful, dear.’

  ‘Something’s going on,’ said Jess as she extracted a bald Barbie and a quadriplegic Ken from a bag. ‘Police everywhere. The square’s cordoned off.’

  ‘Not another murder,’ sighed Richard, examining a coil of till roll.

  ‘All these journalists clogging up lovely Castle Kidbury.’ Doug tutted.

  ‘Yet not one broadsheet reviewer bothered to turn up to The Sound of Music.’

  Doug and Richard had cast Patricia Smalls as Mother Superior in the most recent production by the Castle Kidbury Amateur Dramatic Society. It was the casting of Doug as Maria that sunk the show, however.

  ‘I don’t feel safe walking the streets,’ said Richard. ‘One doesn’t expect this kind of thing beyond the M25.’

  The bell above the door tinkled and announced Eddie.

  ‘What can we do you for?’ said Doug. ‘All our Mills and Boons are reduced.’

  ‘I’m looking for some clothes, actually.’ Eddie reached out and fingered an Aran. ‘For Squeezers.’

  Jess straightened up. ‘You his personal stylist these days?’<
br />
  ‘Poor old sod’s on his uppers.’

  ‘You old softie.’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ smiled Eddie. He didn’t look the part, with his close-cropped hair and his bulldog build.

  ‘You know everything that goes on.’ Jess sidled over to him, helping him browse. ‘What’s with all the coppers?’

  ‘Another body. It was me that phoned it in.’

  Jess had struck gold. ‘When? Where? Who?’

  Sizing a hoodie against Doug, who moved huffily away, Eddie said, ‘First thing. I opened my window and saw a body laid over the cross in the market square. Sort of . . .’ Eddie mimed the corpse’s posture. Arms up and over. Head hanging down. ‘Worst bit was,’ he grimaced, ‘the eyes were gone. Just two holes.’ Eddie shuddered.

  ‘It’s him again,’ breathed Jess. ‘Did you recognise the victim?’ This wasn’t fun and games. It wasn’t scuttlebutt. Somebody had lost a husband or a son.

  ‘Nah. Too disfigured. He was well built, tall, whoever he was. Snappily dressed. Suited and booted, you know? Poor bastard. Fat lot of good his tailoring did him.’

  Jumpers and jackets went into a bag. A laughably small amount of money changed hands. Doug and Richard’s prices had never been revised.

  Elevenses came and went. Half a Battenberg. Dusty Springfield on the shop record player. A customer looking for a boa.

  And outside, bustle. Police vans. Eddie giving a taciturn interview with no facts whatsoever to Look West. A dog handler asking Castle Kidbury-ites not to stroke his German shepherd.

  Jess stood looking past the mannequin at the activity. Something was coalescing in her mind. Suited and booted.

  ‘Just popping out for a second.’

  In Jess’s wake, Doug murmured, ‘Her mother would never have popped out.’

  ‘Too true,’ agreed Richard.

  It probably wasn’t Rupert. But then again, thought Jess, scrolling through her contacts, why shouldn’t it be? He wasn’t immune; nobody was. His phone rang and rang. Jess began to feel hot. He answered.

  ‘Jess, hi.’

  The relief faded. Replaced, as so often with Jess, with something like annoyance. This was their first contact since she’d seen him with Pandora-fucking-Smith, as Jess now thought of the model. ‘Hello.’

  ‘So . . .’ There was a question in Rupert’s voice.

  ‘So you haven’t been brutally murdered and left on the war memorial with your eyes gouged out, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just checking you’re alive. I’m calling everybody. To check they’re alive.’

  ‘Right.’ Rupert sounded as if he was frowning. Or smiling. Jess wasn’t sure which was worse. ‘I’m not allowed into my office. It’s cordoned off.’

  ‘You’re such a swot, Rumpole, working on a Saturday.’ She wandered back into the shop, phone to her ear. ‘So where are you?’

  ‘I’m working from home. Well, I say working . . .’

  A female voice shouted, ‘He’s playing hookey!’

  ‘Shush, Pandy,’ laughed Rupert. ‘She’s terrible.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jess. ‘She is.’

  ‘You two should meet properly,’ said Rupert. ‘I think you’d get on.’

  Jess didn’t answer. The shop door flew open, toppling a tower of Chuck Norris videos. Eden looked around wildly. He found Jess. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m arresting Pan.’

  A liveried car stood at the kerb. Doors open. Jess hurtled over the pavement, through a small, interested crowd. She spotted Neil, staring, and beside him Danny, looking perplexed. Lynne from the minimart bounced on her feet as Jess jumped into the car. ‘Are you arresting her?’ she shouted. ‘Is Jess the murderer?’

  Jess’s adrenaline spiked as the car picked up speed. There is no time to fret or regret in the white centre of the action.

  Chapter 20

  CHILD OF THE UNIVERSE

  Still Saturday 28 May

  The interview room felt different this time.

  Another murder had upped the stakes. The presence of DI Phillips, a carnivore from higher up the food chain, changed the air.

  The detective inspector had challenged the need for Jess’s presence. Eden had defended her.

  ‘I need her,’ he’d said.

  Now Eden stood nonchalantly sorting through files, humming to himself.

  The star of the show sat utterly still. But Jess saw how Pan’s eyes tracked Eden’s movements.

  Jess had clocked a difference in Eden’s bearing. More composed, certain. She wondered what he had on Pan. He had offered nothing in the car.

  ‘How many more times?’ said Pan. He made sure to sound bored. ‘You ain’t got anything on me.’

  ‘Really?’ replied Eden without looking up.

  Sitting back, man-spreading, DI Phillips was older than Eden, with a long nose and the air of an undertaker. ‘You have remarkable confidence for a man in your position, Mr Pan.’

  ‘You’re just wasting time, Mr Senior Pig,’ said Pan. ‘Your time, and the lovely Dr Castle’s. Personally, time’s neither here nor there to me. I’m a child of the universe.’

  Eden sat. Held up an official-looking form. ‘Says here you’re the child of Barry and Maureen Budd from Yeovil.’

  Pan’s expression froze.

  As if he’s deciding how to be, thought Jess.

  ‘Doesn’t sound too cosy, your life at, um, let’s see, twenty-eight Gainsborough Drive.’ Eden looked sympathetic. ‘Poor little Kevin Budd.’

  ‘That’s not my name. I changed it.’ Pan tapped his foot. Fast. ‘And I didn’t live at Gainsborough Drive.’

  ‘According to your social workers, you shuttled between there and your grandparents’. Very worried about you, your grandparents were. Wonder what they’d make of your record.’ Eden nodded at his superior.

  DI Phillips read tonelessly from a document. ‘Graffiti. Petty theft. Cruelty to animals. Car theft. Arson. Actual bodily harm.’ He looked up. Distaste on his face. ‘An attempted rape that didn’t get to court. I wonder if somebody threatened the victim.’

  ‘My grandparents,’ said Pan, ‘are proud of me, as it goes.’

  His foot, Jess noticed, tapped faster as he spoke.

  ‘I deal with people every day who’ve had a bad start in life,’ said Eden. ‘Most of the time, they turn out to be useful. Compassionate. Some take the low road.’ He stared at Pan and Pan stared back.

  Jess sat up. This was a new Eden. Eden the enforcer.

  ‘So sad when a parent tyrannises the home. I can imagine young Kevin getting back from school to find a drugs raid going on. Hot items being fenced in the sitting room. A couple of underage runaways in the kitchen.’ Pan yawned.

  ‘Domestic violence is a curse.’ Eden leant his chin on a cupped hand. ‘If we were to look under your clothes we’d find a scar from a cigarette burn . . . remind me, Detective Inspector, where it is?’

  ‘Right thigh, John. Just below the groin.’

  Pan was thinking so hard his eyes fluttered.

  ‘It’s a breach of trust when a parent beats a child.’

  ‘Blah blah fucking blah,’ said Pan. He slipped lower in his seat.

  ‘Fathers through history have beaten their wives, Kevin, but how did it feel to watch your mum beat your dad?’

  ‘Lawyer,’ snapped Pan, sitting up. ‘I want my lawyer.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said DI Phillips, ‘it made him angry, John.’

  ‘Good point.’ Eden, this new Eden, seemed to enjoy baiting Pan with this rehearsed to-and-fro. ‘You might wonder if such powerlessness would mess with Kevin’s developing masculinity. If it made him exert power over others in violent ways. Who knows?’

  ‘I want my lawyer.’

  ‘You have a lawyer?’ asked Phillips.

  ‘The duty solicitor, then.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Eden. ‘I heard she’s very busy today. Probably not free for about,’ Eden checked his watch ostentatiously, ‘an hour. Which gives us plenty of time to chat.�
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  ‘I’m not sayin’ anything till the duty solicitor gets here.’

  ‘Your prerogative, of course,’ said Phillips. ‘But Castle Kidbury’s in uproar. Press everywhere. The death of a celebrity weatherman on my patch brings the wrong sort of attention. Our lady mayor had to be sedated. The murder ruined her ThinkSpace event.’

  Jess resisted rolling her eyes. Surely Shane Harper was the real victim.

  ‘Of course, you don’t have to say a thing.’ Eden steered the focus back to Pan. ‘But I have to tell you, I’m intrigued by you.’ He paused, letting the compliment land. ‘You exert a powerful influence over people.’

  Jess watched Pan’s shoulders wiggle; flattery was his Achilles heel.

  ‘That little harem of yours would do anything you ask.’

  Pan pouted, apparently appreciating Eden’s insight.

  Eden located another typed list. ‘You certainly manage to get by outside of society. How long is it now you’ve been off the radar? Fifteen years?’

  ‘I am above society’s concerns.’

  ‘You’re certainly above paying council tax,’ huffed Phillips.

  Jess saw a tiny gleam of annoyance in Eden’s eye. Ask him more about his mum, she thought. That’s the way in.

  ‘Do you hate your mum, Kevin?’

  Pan thumped the table. ‘Leave my mum out of this, pig.’

  ‘Did your dad smoke? Hmm. I think it was your mum who liked playing with cigarettes.’

  ‘I want a solicitor now. Shut your mouth.’

  ‘It’s not your fault you turned to cutting up sheep, Kevin.’

  ‘Don’t call me Kevin!’

  Jess was poised, ready to jump up. Pan was shouting now. Fizzing with dark energy. Eden had shown his claws.

  ‘It’s not nice to hurt animals, is it? Not normal. Started with a pet cat, didn’t it? Then a neighbour’s dog you murdered with a firework—’

  ‘I want my fucking solicitor!’

  ‘Did you kill Keith Dike, Gavin Blake and Shane Harper?’

  ‘Shut up, pig!’

  ‘Did you send the eyes of Keith Dike and Gavin Blake to the Echo?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where are Shane Harper’s eyes, Kevin? The newspaper doesn’t have them. We don’t have them. Did you bottle it this time? Worried you’d left too much evidence? Come on, Kevin . . . Pan . . . you’re a pro, an old hand. Don’t insult my intelligence.’