Jess Castle and the Eyeballs of Death

by M B Vincent

  ‘I did not fucking kill them.’

  ‘But the sheep?’

  ‘So I killed the sheep. Crime of the century!’

  Phillips interjected. ‘You previously denied the animal-cruelty charge. What’s to suggest your denial of the murders isn’t also false?’

  ‘Who is this guy?’ Pan jerked a thumb at Phillips.

  Jess spoke. ‘The ritual slaughter of animals can be a prelude to hieros gamos.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Pan. ‘The learned Dr Castle.’ He was scraping together the dregs of his usual demeanour. ‘The knower of things.’

  Eden folded his arms. Listened.

  ‘Hieros gamos can look very like women dancing around in nighties shrieking. And everybody enjoys a good orgy.’

  ‘You’re welcome anytime.’ Pan held out his arms. ‘All of you.’

  ‘But it might be an opportunity for Pan the great seducer, who is actually Kevin who hates women, to force himself on as many girls as possible.’

  ‘No need to force anybody,’ said Pan. Jess had hit a nerve. ‘It’s sacred sex. Look it up.’

  ‘It’s the joining of a goddess and a mortal,’ said Jess. ‘The man is empowered by the act.’

  ‘How do you use your power, Pan?’ Eden was quiet, intense. ‘Is killing animals enough for you? Have you moved onto men?’

  ‘If I was a killer,’ said Pan, ‘you’d be next.’

  ‘Why crucifixion? Some sort of biblical fetish? Fancy yourself as Pontius Pilate? Why the eyes? A message you want to send to the world?’

  Pan threw his head back and stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Crucifixion isn’t just execution,’ said Jess. ‘It’s about ceremony, display. A warning.’

  ‘What are you warning us about?’ asked Eden. ‘To leave well alone? To respect you, perhaps?’

  Pan sat, arms folded, head still back.

  Eden reached for another batch of files. ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘At the field.’

  ‘With the women?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pan sounded teenager-bored. ‘Ask any of them.’

  ‘We did,’ said Phillips. ‘Some of them can’t remember their names, they’re so intoxicated.’

  ‘Doesn’t make for a very reliable alibi,’ tutted Eden, with mock regret. ‘Where were you?’

  Pan’s composure seemed to falter. He looked straight at Eden. ‘At the field. I said.’

  ‘You know I’m going to arrest you?’

  ‘I know how this works, pig.’

  A packet of Jaffa Cakes helped pass the time as Jess waited for Eden in his office. When she heard footsteps and butch conversation, she bundled the cardboard box back into her bag.

  ‘Listen, John.’ Jess’s ears twitched. Phillips sounded exasperated. ‘I’ve heard enough. The guy likes attention and he’s full of hate. Plenty of motive there, for the overdone violence and the flashy telly-friendly display. The alibis are worthless. A good barrister would shoot those drug-addled women down in flames. He’s strong enough, he has form and he’s into all this spiritual twaddle. Ssh, John. No. Arrest him and let his lawyer make a fuss.’

  Phillips stalked away.

  ‘You heard,’ said Eden as he sat at his desk.

  ‘Couldn’t help it. So you’re really arresting Pan.’

  ‘The boss is desperate for a result.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But the right one.’

  ‘You don’t think Pan did it?’ Jess remembered her eyeball-to-eyeball moment in the charity shop changing room. ‘He’s capable of it.’

  Eden shrugged. ‘He’s sticking to a very simple story. That he slaughtered the sheep but not the humans.’

  ‘I don’t think he did it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just a feeling.’ Jess snaffled another Jaffa.

  ‘Hunches, Jess.’

  ‘You don’t like them.’

  ‘They can be wrong. The truth is, there are many questions that if answered one way drop him in it, but if answered another way, rule him out.’ Eden squared his shoulders. ‘I’m going to hang on to Pan. Arrest him for possession. The boys got lucky and found some spice under his bed. We’ll hold him while we look into a couple of outstanding warrants under his real name. I’m not pinning the killings on him yet. I don’t want the town to relax.’

  ‘Just in case,’ said Jess.

  ‘Just in case we’ve got it wrong and the killer strikes again.’

  ‘Your bosses won’t like it.’

  ‘I’m hanging on by a thread as it is. I might as well use what time I have left.’

  A volt of electricity shot through Jess. ‘Eden! Unthank was wanging on about the market cross. He made a point of it. About how it was part of the furniture but signified death. Then Shane’s body is left on it.’ She picked up the receiver on his desk. Held it out to him. ‘Call him in! Finger him, or whatever you call it.’

  ‘I never call it that.’ Eden looked perturbed. ‘I’m ahead of you, Jess. DC Knott spoke to Mr Unthank about his whereabouts last night.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Although you’d think Mr Unthank would have gone back to his wife and brand-new baby after the funeral, he slept alone in his bed at the EasySleep Inn.’

  ‘Still no CCTV?’

  ‘The manageress vouched for him. The only way out is through reception. He would have had to break a window and there was no evidence of that.’

  ‘If he’s clever enough to kill three people and leave no evidence, I’m sure he could escape from an EasySleep.’

  ‘We’ll keep an eye on him,’ said Eden.

  ‘Speaking of eyes . . .’ said Jess.

  ‘I know. We need Shane Harper’s eyes to come in. Nothing’s been delivered to the Echo. I’m worried that our man – Pan, Kevin, Unthank, Squeezers – might be disappointed in the lack of publicity and leave them out in the open. God forbid a member of the public finds a box of eyes, or there goes our tourism award.’

  Eden walked Jess out through the incident room. From every quarter came a question, an idea, an ‘Oi guv!’ The strip-lit square was a brain, seething with activity.

  Jess peeked at screens as she passed. Earwigged on phone conversations. She greedily took in the whiteboard complete with red timelines and victim photographs and a mugshot of Pan. Just like the telly, she thought. Right down to the fast-food cartons.

  As Eden bade her a distracted goodbye, Jess’s hand found a card in her pocket.

  Unthank’s business card. Put away. Forgotten.

  She looked at it. She turned to call to Eden. She decided against it. His mind was already back in the incident room.

  Outside, the clouds still glowered above the police station and the broad bland sweep of Margaret Thatcher Way. Sitting in her car, Jess felt something very like a hunch.

  Luis Unthank’s company was called Hellcat Solutions. The card was illustrated with a freehand drawing, in hot pinks and reds, of what looked like a fidget spinner.

  Hellcat, Jess knew, was a frequent historical mispronunciation of Hecate.

  That fidget spinner was actually a three-headed wheel. ‘Or strophalos,’ said Jess to herself, enjoying the bulk of the word. ‘Also known as Hecate’s Wheel.’

  Chapter 21

  ORIENTAL HARMONY EXPERIENCE

  Sunday 29 May

  Water seeped through the holes in her body.

  Jess was full up with water.

  In it and of it, she saw a wound open up in the tiles of the pool.

  She was being dragged towards it.

  This time when she woke up she was only whispering the words.

  I’m sorry.

  If Jess lined up all the places in the world she would rather not be – including ex-lovers’ beds and nosediving aircraft – this five-star spa would be near the number-one spot. The fluffy towelling robe itched. The Plink! Plonk! of faux-Eastern music grated.

  When Susannah had picked her up an hour earlier, she’d taken in Jess’s pyjamas and haystack
hair. ‘You’ve forgotten!’

  It had been a wail. Jess’s sister-in-law lived for spa days, marking them in red on her wall planner, checking carefully whether the price included complimentary Prosecco, carving her body into ‘problem areas’ to be ‘targeted’.

  ‘I didn’t forget. I swear.’

  Jess hadn’t forgotten. She had never known. The voucher tucked into a gift bag and handed over at Sunday lunch had never been opened, and now the murders were on hold while Jess filled out a pointless form in the foyer of the Chase Hall Hotel spa.

  Jess was reining in her frustration. She hated to disappoint Susannah. The two women would have disagreed about politics, about feminism, about religion, if Susannah ever gave such topics a thought. Yet Jess loved her. In a low-key, back-burner sort of way.

  ‘Contraindications!’ she grumbled.

  ‘That means,’ said Susannah helpfully, ‘anything that would stop you having the treatments. Like being pregnant. You’re not . . .? No, I thought not. Imagine that! Or allergies, or a pacemaker.’

  ‘I’m allergic to this music.’ And the pseudoscience in the brochure. And the hush, as if they were in a cathedral and not a breeze-block hotel extension.

  ‘We must be mindful, not flippant.’ Susannah was pained by Jess’s lack of piety. ‘That’s the whole point of the Oriental Harmony Experience.’

  The attendants who whisked them off to separate treatment rooms weren’t particularly oriental. Mandy told Jess, in the local twang, that she was ‘dedicated to deliverin’ wellness’ and handed her a pair of paper knickers.

  As Mandy began to scrub her – quite vigorously – with salt and oil, Jess tuned out. She disobeyed the rules of the spa. Instead of emptying her mind, she filled it with murder.

  The symbols on Gavin’s body travelled everywhere with her. Pan’s arrest was progress. But Eden was still digging. One word bothered him. The same word that reared up in the darkened room as Mandy prepared the Yin Yang Detox Algae Body Wrap.

  Why?

  Jess wasn’t satisfied with the motive.

  Mandy left the room on whisper-soft feet once Jess was secured in some sort of foil straitjacket. The therapist had earnestly explained ‘kick-starting detoxification’ and ‘balancing, like, your senses and that’. As the slimy algae seeped into her skin, Jess thought about Pan. She concentrated. Hard. The way she did when she read her students’ work, or contemplated the fingers of Stonehenge.

  She was rewarded.

  If Pan involved the women in the killings, it would bind them to him forever.

  The spaced-out harem might see through Pan at some point, drift back to provincial normality. Murder, though, would shackle them together for life.

  Blood had bound people together since the first drops were shed. Celtic blood brothers. Ancient Mayans. Clever leaders – and Pan was clever, in his shyster way – recognised the primal. Add the criminality of murder to the drama of bloodletting, and those women were hostages.

  ‘Now if you’ll just pop into the shower for me,’ Mandy was back, ‘we can get cracking on your mud treatment.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Because you are, if you don’t mind me saying so, a bit dry.’

  Jess had minded Mandy saying so. She minded quite a lot of what Mandy said. Particularly ‘Are we worried about ageing at all?’ and ‘I can suggest something for your blackhead situation’. All in all, Jess was relieved to see the back of Mandy and meet Susannah for the all-inclusive afternoon tea in an echoing conservatory.

  ‘Doesn’t this, you know, kind of negate all the yin and yang shizzle?’ Jess said, ravishing a scone.

  ‘We deserve this.’ Susannah was vehement. ‘We can work off the calories in the gym.’

  ‘You can. My calories are welcome to hang around.’

  ‘I’m glad we . . . it’s nice to chat, just the two of us . . .’

  There was evidently something Susannah wanted to spit out. Jess hoped it wasn’t Baydrian-related. ‘How are things? With you and Stephen?’

  ‘You’ve noticed?’ Susannah put down her scone. ‘You see it too?’

  ‘Um . . .’ Jess’s elementary conversational opener had been misinterpreted.

  ‘He’s behaving oddly. Not odd, exactly. No. Yes. Odd.’ Susannah, unused to speaking out, was finding it tricky.

  ‘Odd how?’ Jess didn’t truly want to know. Her brother’s marriage was a closed book to her. Like their wedding, which had involved top hats, flower girls and the release of doves above the congregation. ‘You seem so close.’ Jess had overheard other women talk like this. Her brother and sister-in-law were yoked together, stoking the furnace of their large house, their gifted children, their two long-haul holidays per year. Was ‘close’ the right word to describe Stephen and Susannah? Jess had never put their relationship under a microscope before.

  ‘We are, oh we are.’ Susannah’s long, slightly horsey face shone with essential oils. ‘But he’s been buying new clothes. Hiding them.’

  ‘What sort of clothes?’

  ‘Trendy.’ Susannah shocked herself as well as Jess. ‘I found a pair of Vans trainers. I can’t help thinking . . . this is silly, I mean it’s Stephen for heaven’s sake . . . but, do you think, another woman?’

  ‘Nah.’ Jess shook her head. It amazed her that Stephen had managed one woman. ‘He loves you, Susannah.’

  ‘I know that.’ Susannah sounded peeved. ‘That doesn’t guarantee anything.’ Her demeanour changed abruptly. She bounced on her chair. ‘Yoo-hoo!’ she waved at somebody behind Jess.

  Turning, Jess saw Helena coming towards them on heels that click-clacked like gunshot on the tiled floor. ‘Ladies, so lovely to see you.’ Helena exuded professional bonhomie as crisp as her navy pencil skirt.

  There was the mandatory female badinage. Susannah insisted that Helena had lost weight. Helena made a joke about the ‘naughty’ afternoon tea. And then Helena was gone, leaving a wake of polite perfume.

  ‘She’s amazing,’ said Susannah in a stage whisper. ‘I don’t know how she does it. A tragedy like that would kill me.’

  Jess didn’t respond.

  ‘What do you do when you lose somebody just like that? Where does all the love go?’

  Jess didn’t know.

  ‘And Helena keeps her hair so nice, too.’ Susannah was in awe of such grit. ‘You have no idea what love is until you have a child.’ Susannah recovered enough to take the last of the jam.

  ‘So I hear.’ Jess had heard a variation on this riff many times. It never got interesting.

  ‘It’s like your heart beats outside your body,’ said Susannah, her face beatific.

  ‘Urgh,’ said Jess.

  ‘You’d know what I mean if you had a baby of your own.’

  ‘Love is love, surely.’ Jess tried not to be terse. Susannah didn’t set out to imply that Jess was a withered old maid with ovaries like air-dried Parma ham.

  ‘Ooh.’ Susannah flapped her hands. ‘Weren’t you at Gavin’s seventh birthday party, Jess?’

  She had to say yes. She couldn’t lie. She didn’t add that most nights, when she slept, she was still there.

  Chapter 22

  FIELD OF DREAMS

  Monday 30 May

  The hand-written advertisements in the minimart window pulled Jess into another world. A world where somebody was selling a guinea pig and a toaster and would accept eight pounds or nearest offer for the pair. She heard her name being called.

  Danny and Tallulah were arm in arm. She leant on him. He leant on her. They laughed. She fixed his hair. They were preposterously in love.

  ‘They caught the killer,’ said Danny. ‘I told them it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t you.’ Tallulah was repressive. ‘Don’t talk about the murders, they’re horrible.’ She yanked at his collar. ‘Look at the state of you.’

  Danny beamed as she strode off.

  ‘Come on, catch up,’ shouted Tallulah over her shoulder.

  Danny’s mother, walking behind them, looked worried
ly about her as the pair hooted with laughter. She seemed nervous about them drawing attention to themselves, and she smiled anxiously at Jess, saying, ‘What do you make of this?’

  ‘I think they’re a match made in heaven.’ Jess was full of compassion for the worried woman who used to give her a tenner to watch Danny while she rushed out to do the weekly shop. ‘Danny likes to be bossed, and, boy, does Tallulah like to boss.’ Love had won and Jess was glad.

  One of the hazards – or perks, if you’re not Jess – of small-town life is constantly bumping into folk. A goodbye to the lovebirds and their frazzled chaperone and Jess saw Rupert and Pandora approaching. They were jaunty. Arm in arm.

  ‘Shit,’ growled Jess under her breath.

  ‘What happened to your hair?’ Rupert was amused. His amusement annoyed Jess.

  ‘Oh this?’ Jess tossed her head, insouciant. ‘I had a massage yesterday. There’s oil in it.’

  ‘Right.’ Rupert seemed unsure that this was adequate explanation for what was happening on Jess’s head.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were into pampering.’ Pandora was catwalk-ready as she said this.

  ‘No, well,’ was all Jess could muster. Pandora’s lustrous appearance wasn’t the source of her humiliation. But it didn’t help.

  ‘And your face.’ Rupert leant in to peer with horrified fascination, as if she was a bloated corpse. ‘It’s all blotchy.’

  ‘That’s the facial,’ explained Pandora. ‘Some people’s skin reacts badly.’ She pulled a sad face.

  ‘Where are you two beautiful people off to?’ asked Jess, wishing she could drop down a trapdoor.

  ‘Pandora’s uncle, for lunch. You’ve probably heard of him – Hugo Smith. He owns those vineyards in Devon. We’re introducing him to Patricia Smalls.’

  ‘At her request.’ Pandora snorted. ‘God, she’s a pill, isn’t she?’

  Jess had something in common with her nemesis. ‘She certainly is.’

  ‘She tried to invite your father,’ added Rupert, one eyebrow raised.