Without Conscience

by Michael Kerr

  Mark pulled into the Residents Only car park and looked suspiciously at the old Vauxhall that his full beams swept over. As he climbed out of JC, he glanced across to where the unfamiliar car was parked under the sodium yellow glow of a globe-encased light that was atop a twenty-foot-high concrete post.

  The driver’s door opened, and Mark immediately recognised the lowlife photographer he’d last seen in Hyde Park, as the little man pulled his collar up against the rain and walked quickly towards him.

  “No camera, see?” Larry said with an open-handed gesture. “I just want to talk to you for a minute. I―”

  “You drove a long way for nothing, pally,” Mark said. “I don’t talk to the press, ever.”

  “Come on, get real,” Larry came back. “You wrote a fucking book for Christ’s sake. That doesn’t promote anonymity. Blushing violet, you’re not.”

  “That was on my terms, and a long time ago,” Mark countered, surprised that he was being defensive. “It doesn’t buy you jack shit.”

  “It made you high-profile for a while, and consulting on this investigation just opened the floodgates again.”

  “Only because you popped up out of the bushes with your Box Brownie.”

  “It’s a top of the range Canon. And if I hadn’t popped up, then someone else would have, sooner or later.”

  Mark turned, walked to the entrance door and slashed his card key through the slot above the handle.

  “I don’t misquote, and I do have ethics, Dr Ross,” Larry shouted after him, as Mark pushed the door open, intent on ridding himself of what he considered to be a minor nuisance. “I’m freelance by choice,” Larry continued. “I got sick of the politics and half truths served up with lashings of bias. I’ll work with you on this, not against you. And anything you want off the record, will be.”

  “I’ve never met a newshound I could trust,” Mark said, pausing and looking back to study the bedraggled, dishevelled, unshaven man, and seeing sincerity in his eyes that shone through, contradicting his seedy appearance. “I suppose you’ll stick like glue whether I like it or not. Am I right?”

  “You got it, Doc. When I smell a big story, I’m a regular bloodhound or leech. A lack of perseverance isn’t among my many faults. And I know that you’re hot.”

  “Larry, isn’t it?” Mark said.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Okay, Larry. Come on up and we’ll see if we can work something out to our mutual benefit. I don’t want to have to be looking for you behind every fence, pillar-box or tree from hereon in. I’d rather have you out in the open where I can keep an eye on you.”

  “You won’t regret it,” Larry said, beaming like a guy who’d fallen arse over tit in shit, to crawl out of it smelling of roses and with his pockets full of diamonds.

  “If I do, you will. Comprende?”

  Larry nodded. His fingers still ached a little from their first meeting, and he could sense the capacity for extreme violence in the tall American. Some people you didn’t mess with. Ross was that sort of person.

  Sitting in the kitchen, facing the psychologist across the table, Larry sipped at the two fingers of Scotch he had been offered and gratefully accepted. He was warm now. Mark – which was how the Yank said he preferred to be addressed – had taken his sodden coat away, then handed him a towel to dry his hair, face and hands with, before leaving the room, to return looking fresh in a blue chambray shirt, keenly pressed cream chinos, and tan-coloured moccasins on his otherwise bare feet.

  “Tell me, why have you jumped back into the killing game, Mark? Why get involved? I thought you’d walked away from all of that crap when you quit the FBI. Your book made it clear that profiling was behind you; part of a past that you had no intention of revisiting.”

  “I did walk away. I wrote Missing Conscience to flush it all out of my system. It was akin to having stomach cramps, then taking a king-size dump, washing up and closing the bathroom door on the stink. I felt like a new person.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Same as after taking a dump. You eat again, and what goes around comes around.”

  “That’s a simplification. Analogous answers are cute, but evasive,” Larry said.

  Mark grinned. “Okay, Larry. I weakened a couple of years back and profiled a case. Now I’ve been asked to help out again, and realise that it’s a part of me, like the nose on my face. It’s there, love it or hate it.”

  “What makes you different to a regular copper?”

  “I’m not a cop. And what makes me different is that I am sometimes able to get into ritual murderers’ heads. I somehow tune in to their wavelength. I have empathy for it.”

  “That sounds like a frightening talent.”

  Mark grimaced and said, “Tell me about it.”

  “And you enjoy going into the minds of raving homicidal lunatics?”

  “No, it’s a need. Like you have for booze. You might wake up hating yourself every morning, but you know that you’ll go back for a hair of the dog. I suppose I’m like an alcoholic that has fallen off the wagon.”

  “How did―?”

  “I knew that you were a lush from in the park the other day. Your breath was eighty proof, and your hands were trembling. Add to that eyes like piss-holes in snow, and the unshaven, unkempt look of first stage self neglect, and we’ve got a guy trying to blow his liver up.”

  “That bad, eh?”

  “Worse. How old are you, Larry?”

  “Forty-nine.”

  “You’d pass for sixty at least. All that’s keeping you going is your work. And once the booze starts cutting into your brain and causing short-term memory loss, then you’re all washed-up. I give you another five years at best before they find you lying stone-cold dead in your own vomit.”

  “You certainly know how to make friends and influence people.”

  “Another of my gifts.”

  “Can you find this killer?” Larry said, wanting to change the subject. He didn’t need lecturing on his chosen shitty way of dealing with life.

  “I don’t know. This isn’t a typical serial murderer. It’s personal. The unsub has a known, intended victim lined up. The park killings are just fillers, to terrorise his mark.”

  “Who is the intended victim?”

  “Forget who. It could cost the person his or her life.”

  “It has to be a look-alike,” Larry mused, verbally. “The guy is killing young redheads. The motive must be rage. It’s some fruitcake who’s been blown out and can’t handle rejection. If he can’t have her, then no one else can. This is jealousy and hate that’s got way out of control. You’re looking for someone as crazy as a shithouse rat. How am I doing?”

  “Very good. Behind those bleary eyes lurks a rapier-quick mind.”

  “So, I’m right?”

  “This is off the record, OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Well you’re in the ballpark. Tell me, do you want to help save lives, or just make a few quid to blow on more hooch?”

  “Both,” Larry said without a second’s hesitation. “But the priority is saving lives.”

  “What do you want from me, Larry? Spell it out.”

  “An exclusive interview and a photo shoot. I want you to tell me all that you can about the park murders without compromising anyone. And I’d like another exclusive after the case is resolved.”

  “And in return, you’ll help me bait the son of a bitch, right?”

  “How?”

  “They say the pen is mightier than the sword. I’ll think about how you can wield it while I freshen our drinks. Go and get your camera.”

  “We’ve got a deal, then?”

  “Yeah, Larry,” Mark said, sticking out his hand to cement it.

  Larry nervously shook the offered hand. The two men held each other’s gaze. Mark knew that he had an ally, if he was as good a judge of character as he believed himself to be.

  Seated in the lounge, they talked till well past three in the morning. Larry took
notes and photographs, only putting his camera aside when Mark said, “Enough, I ain’t some movie star.”

  Rising, stretching as he yawned, Mark then took the now empty Scotch bottle and glasses through to the kitchen.

  “Sleep on the couch, Larry. You’re as drunk as a skunk,” he said. They had agreed on the content of the exclusive interview that Larry would sell-on as soon as he had written it up.

  “Thanks, Mark, I’m knackered. A couple of hours wouldn’t hurt.”

  It was a little after seven a.m. and still dark when Mark rose, pulled on his robe and walked bare-foot through to the lounge from the bedroom. He rolled his head and groaned as bones cracked in his neck. His eyelids were malfunctioning, gummed with sleep. His mouth tasted like shit on toast. Too much Scotch. He was out of practise, and glad to be able to admit it.

  Larry was gone. There was a scrawled message on a Post-it affixed to the coffee maker: ‘Watch this space’ was the succinct one-liner, with the newshound’s mobile phone number written below it. Mark pulled the small yellow square off the pot and stuck it on the wall-mounted cork message board, then went for a shower while fresh coffee brewed. Once dressed, he turned on the TV and digi-box, watched the news and drank a steaming mug of coffee, black.

  The fax machine came to beeping life. He carried his mug through to the lounge and hovered over the tray like a vulture impatiently waiting in line to pick at any titbits left at the scene of a kill.

  The facsimiles of first Jason Tyler’s face, then of a previously unseen female’s face were disgorged, followed by a hand-written note from Barney:

  Mark,

  The shot of Tyler is recent. The one of Ellen Garner (ringed) is the best of a bad bunch, taken a decade ago.

  Keep me up to date.

  B.

  “I can see egg y... yolk-yellow around this man’s head, Dr Ross,” Billy said, studying the faxes that faced him on the top of his bed, where Mark had placed them side by side. “He’s arrogant, self-centred, and t... totally untrustworthy. But there’s n...no sign of him being capable of hurting anyone.”

  “How about the other one?” Mark said, tapping the image of Ellen Garner, who was pictured standing between two other girls; one being Caroline.

  Billy removed his glasses, wiped the lenses with the bottom of his T-shirt, replaced them, blinked rapidly and narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the broad-faced female with the manly haircut. “Bright red,” he said, his voice spiked with excitement, stammer gone again. “Not just one red; a mixture of crimson, scarlet, ruby, vermilion, cherry, wine and blood. Every red I’ve ever seen.”

  “You said that red signified a person being in danger,” Mark observed.

  “It’s subtle. In this case it’s volatile. She is danger.”

  “Can you tell if she has murdered anyone, Billy?”

  “I don’t think she had when this picture was taken. But there’s a rage within her. She is capable of violence. I’d need a current photograph to know if she has actually killed anyone.”

  “I’ll try to get hold of one,” Mark said. “What about the woman in the newspaper; the one who was standing behind me?”

  “She’s cool, Dr Ross. Mother of pearl; the sun behind clouds. That’s like the Queen of diamonds in a pack of cards. She’s mucho lucky in life and love at the moment.”

  Mark couldn’t help but relax inwardly. Everyone likes to hear good news, whoever gives it. He didn’t believe in gypsy fortune tellers, but would rather not hear bad news from them, or piss them off enough to hang a curse on him. Why take risks? If an old Romany wearing a shawl and all bent up with arthritis knocked at his door touting clothes pegs or even lucky dried dog turds, then he’d most likely buy some, just to keep on the right side of stuff he didn’t understand. As a psychologist he would never admit it, but the truth was, he was as superstitious as the next person. He didn’t walk under ladders, and was careful around mirrors.

  “Now let’s go for that walk down by the lake,” Mark said, picking up the two sheets of copy paper and sliding them into a document wallet.

  “Y... You mean it?” Billy whispered, his eyes bulging as his stammer resurfaced.

  “A deal’s a deal, Billy. I got it cleared. Get some warm clothes on and we’ll take some time out.”

  Mark waited till Billy pulled on a grey pullover, blue jeans, and trainers (with Velcro fastenings, not laces), then took his donkey jacket from a plastic hook on the inside of the small closet. The deranged patient seemed like a small boy. Looks could be deceiving.

  They walked side by side along the gravelled drive, then angled across the grass to a wooden bench that was sited near the lake’s edge, facing out towards the large expanse of water. Sitting beneath the bare, drooping branches of a mature weeping willow, Billy appeared, erroneously, to be a happy, harmless young man taking the air on a country outing.

  “I know I’m n... not, and never will be again in this life, but I feel s...so free here, Dr Ross,” Billy said. “I’ll keep this hour in a sp... special place, like a mosquito fixed in amber, and be able to hold it up in m...my mind whenever I want to examine it and relive what it was like.”

  William Blake had written: ‘Cruelty has a human heart’. He was right, Mark thought. But sometimes the heart, or mind in this case, is not aware of the cruelty that it inflicts. He believed that to be the case with Billy Hicks. Billy was a deluded, dangerous individual, not au fait with his condition or shortcomings. It was almost impossible to watch the skinny, bespectacled patient gazing out at the lake, and accept that he truly believed that alien life forms had taken over his parents’ and sister’s brains. Or that he was in touch with a ‘visitor’, who appeared to him in the guise of a black owl. Knowing that Billy was mentally ill made Mark question his own grip on reality. How could he believe that this man was capable of seeing coloured auras around people; colours that denoted their personalities and emotional state, while at the same time dismissing out of hand the possibility of an avian visitor, or mind-controlling entities from outer space? The blind faith in God in various forms was shared by billions of people worldwide. Were aliens any less real or more ludicrous to embrace as an actuality? Mark decided that madness lay down that road, and concentrated on the still surface of the lake, and the reflections of the scudding clouds that swept over it.

  “See those ducks over there, Billy?” Mark said, pointing to several mallards that kept up-ending to feed on the rich soup of small invertebrates below the surface.

  “Yes, Dr Ross, I s... see them.”

  Mark pulled a bread wrapper containing several slices from the deep side pocket of his car coat. “Try them with this,” he said, passing it to his ward. “I’ve yet to meet the daffy that can resist a free handout.”

  After a few minutes, Mark wandered off, leaving Billy to revel alone in his brief state of pseudo liberty. At a discreet distance, a hospital officer and two orderlies kept a watchful eye on the proceedings, ready to restrain Billy if he stepped out of line.

  Later, back in the facility proper, Martin met them, to escort Billy back to the residential wing.

  “Thanks for that, Dr Ross,” Billy said. “I can’t remember when I had a b... better time.”

  “You’re welcome,” Mark said, nearly adding that they might do it again; incorporate it into his treatment plan as a therapeutically viable avenue to pursue. But he bit the words back as they formed. If it happened, it happened. He would not promote false hope. It was amazing, though, that the time by the lake had – if only temporarily – given rise to a radical change in Billy Hicks. He was walking erect, shoulders back, not shuffling. And a previously unseen air of self esteem was evident in his demeanour. Mark watched as Billy strode side by side with Martin along the wide corridor. The young man’s arms swung freely at his sides, his hands not down the front of his trousers, as was the norm.

  Back in his office, Mark wrote up Billy’s history sheet, detailing the results of the exercise, which had produced more positive reactions in the pa
tient than all other previous treatments put together.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The girl at the till in Waterstones was a doe-eyed, anorexic looking little bitch with spiky orange hair, a stud in her bottom lip, and overlong fingernails that were varnished black. How long was she going to talk in hushed tones to the blue-rinsed old cow that had just traded in a book token for a flowery jacketed piece of romantic crap, which would no doubt be full of apolitical, asexual, afucking everything, that ignored all aspects of reality or anything that could be considered remotely controversial? Why were old farts attracted to a fantasy world without sex, violence, drugs, child abuse, and all the day-to-day variety of life in its ripe fullness and full ripeness? Did they reach an age where the fear of living and all that it implied bowed their spirits and turned their minds and guts to jelly? It was probably that the nearer to the grave they got, the darker aspects of dementia, cancer, and being a spit away from feeding the worms affected their outlook. Safe, uplifting, optimistic tales with, ‘and then they lived happily ever after’ endings must help them allay the dread of a near future that would manage all too well without them in it.