Before Her Eyes

by Jack Jordan

  ‘I know, sir.’

  ‘I fucking hope you do.’

  Cunningham sighed and looked over his shoulder to check the uniformed officers were still manning the entrance to the alley. Marcus knew he wasn’t thinking about Amber. He was thinking about the press and the answers he would have to give.

  ‘Why was she walking home?’

  ‘She didn’t own a car.’

  ‘And no one offered her a lift?’

  ‘With all due respect, sir, I’m her boss, not her mum.’

  Cunningham stared at her until she looked away. Her eyes landed on the body, revealing a flash of grief as they settled on Amber’s sliced neck.

  ‘You,’ he said to Marcus. ‘Tell me about the witness.’

  ‘Naomi Hannah, thirty-six years old, blind.’ He could hear his voice shaking slightly in the man’s presence.

  ‘What did she have to say?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s not a reliable—’

  ‘I’m not talking to you, Elliott.’

  ‘She described the suspect as of medium build, and believes he was wearing latex gloves, or something with a similar consistency.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘He seemed to …’ Lisa watched him, as though every word he spoke was a betrayal, ‘play with her. I think the killer enjoyed her disability; it added to the fun of it. He blocked her path in the alley so she would have to turn back towards the body, and then made her interact with it.’

  Marcus knew he was in for it the second the superintendent left, but he had to speak his mind. Lisa wouldn’t listen to him any other way.

  ‘Did the killer try to harm her too?’

  ‘Not physically.’

  ‘Interesting. Lisa, work on this.’

  ‘She isn’t important in finding —’

  ‘I told you to work on it, not debate it. The way the killer interacted with the witness could be key to finding out who this fucker is.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Cunningham looked at his watch. ‘I want the scene report on my desk first thing, and the follow-up routes you’re taking. It won’t be long before the press hears about this and I want to be ready. This cannot turn out like Hayley Miller’s case, understand? We can’t close another high-profile case unsolved. Nail this fucker.’ He took one final look at Amber’s body; his right eyelid twitched at the sight. ‘And for God’s sake, someone tell the girl’s family.’

  ‘Sir,’ they said as he turned and made his way down the alley, lighting a cigarette in a cupped hand. Smoke curled over his shoulder.

  Lisa and Marcus stood before the body in silence. Dr Ling spoke to her colleague in whispers. The smell of cigarette smoke had just begun to fill Marcus’s nostrils when Lisa squared up to him, pushing herself onto the balls of her feet.

  ‘Never show me up like that again.’

  ‘He asked me what I thought, so I told him.’

  ‘You went behind my back. I told you the blind woman wasn’t important, because it’s true. She’s nothing to this investigation, and nothing to the killer, otherwise she’d be dead. My word is to be sacred from now on, you hear? If anyone asks for your thoughts, you tell them mine. I run this team, I run this investigation, and I run you. Understand?’

  He nodded, tightening his fists in his pockets.

  ‘We’re a woman down, so you and Blake need to step it up. No bitching at each other, no stepping out of line. Be in the office by eight sharp. It’s going to be a long day.’

  Marcus nodded and turned back towards the mouth of the alley, submerging himself in the darkness of the night before he dared to take a deep breath.

  Lisa didn’t trust his judgement; she would rather send him home and get all the work, and the credit, for herself.

  ‘Lisa,’ Dr Ling said behind him. ‘Amber had two phones. Just like Cassie Jennings.’

  He stopped mid-step.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Lisa said.

  ‘Look.’

  Marcus walked back up the alley and stood beside her. Two mobile phones were nestled in Amber’s bag.

  ‘Same make as the first victim’s,’ Dr Ling said, pointing to the pay-as-you-go model.

  The phone was indeed the same as Cassie’s, a knock-off designed to look like a touch-screen smartphone but for an eighth of the price.

  ‘Shit!’ Lisa stood back and paced up and down with her hands on her head. ‘We can’t know for sure they were in contact with each other, not until we link the calls from each of the phones.’

  ‘What were they doing that meant they needed untraceable phones?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘Right now, I don’t even want to know.’ She rubbed the skin on her face and released a hot sigh into her hands. ‘We’re fucked if Amber was doing something she shouldn’t have.’

  She closed her eyes and sighed.

  ‘Go home. I need you fresh and alert tomorrow.’

  Marcus turned away again without a word and clenched and unclenched his hands, trying to bring the blood back into them.

  He thought back to the argument he’d overheard between Amber and Blake at the office, the tears shimmering on her face and the desperation in her eyes.

  Tell me what to do. Please, just tell me what I should do.

  Why should I help you? What you did could have destroyed my marriage, my career. I don’t owe you anything.

  What did you do, Amber? he thought to himself. What did you do that could have affected Blake?

  He fished his car keys from his pocket. Lisa had decided not to drive him to the scene after all. She’d told him she needed time to think. He wondered if she had been coming up with her next statement for the press. Whatever the reason, she had made it very clear: she preferred to work alone.

  He thought of Blake and the anger that had radiated off him as he emerged from the kitchen. Whatever had happened between them could link to Amber’s murder. She had needed help. But it was too late. He would talk to Blake tomorrow and find out what he knew.

  He sat behind the wheel of his car and rested his forehead on the steering wheel, unfurling a hot sigh into his lap. He thought about what the superintendent had said about the Hayley Miller case. She was like a ghost stalking everyone in the town. Everyone seemed to know about her but him. Their eagerness to keep the case in the dark only made him want to bring it to light. He had to find out what had happened to her.

  As he turned the key in the ignition, he noticed his hand was shaking, and only then did he realise it wasn’t hunger churning in his stomach, but fear.

  TWELVE

  Naomi knew it was her own blood coating her fingers, but she couldn’t shake the thought that it belonged to the murdered woman.

  The police officer had taken her to the hospital to get her stitches redone after she’d spotted fresh blood seeping through the bandages. Kate, her name was. She had sat with her for over an hour as they waited for a nurse to come, needle in hand, ready to sew her back together again. It would take more than a few stitches to fix her.

  Stop moving, the nurse had said curtly. But Naomi couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. In the end, the woman had pressed the backs of her hands against the top of the metal table.

  It’s not her blood.

  She could still feel the woman’s hair tangled around her fingers and the blood packed beneath her nails. She couldn’t see that the water in the sink was running red with her own blood.

  Max lay by her feet, dozing lightly.

  Once more and then I’ll go to sleep.

  She couldn’t bear the thought of closing her eyes. The memories would be waiting for her.

  The brush jabbed beneath her fingernail. She dropped it into the sink and shoved the finger in her mouth, massaging the wound with her tongue. The taste reminded her of the alley, breathing in that metallic scent of death. She sat on the side of the bath and sucked at the wound until the pain ceased.

  Max barked and chased the sound of the doorbell. Naomi jolted and bit down on her finger.

  She l
onged to avoid whoever was waiting at her front door, but she couldn’t face going to sleep. Closing her eyes meant lowering her guard. She was too easy to catch when she was awake; she couldn’t risk sleep. Not yet.

  She crept down the stairs, listening to Max shuffling impatiently before the door. She wiped her finger on her top and took the handle.

  ‘Naomi, what’s wrong?’ Dane asked. ‘Why are you crying?’

  She patted her cheeks and felt the tears.

  ‘Naomi? What’s happened?’

  He stepped into the doorway and guided her back inside; shut the door behind him. She could smell the aftershave lathered on his neck and fought the urge to sit him down, crawl up onto his lap and breathe it all in.

  ‘Your hands! What the hell happened to you?’

  His shock made it all real. The words caught in her throat.

  ‘Naomi?’

  He held her arm and she crumpled. She fell into his chest, wetting his work tunic with her tears.

  ‘Who did this to you?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘We should call the police.’

  ‘I have!’ She was going to tell him, but he was too quick.

  ‘Naomi …’

  She kissed his lips and pulled at him until their bodies were pressed together, ribs to ribs. She felt the hammering of his heart against her chest.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he whispered, his words warming her tears.

  She drew his lips to her again, tasting him, needing every part of him, and let him take her in his arms and carry her up the stairs.

  She needed to feel safe.

  She needed to forget.

  THIRTEEN

  Marcus slipped into the archives room and closed the door quietly behind him. He checked the clock on the wall. There was no telling how long Lisa and Blake would be in their meeting. He had to move quickly.

  The windowless room smelt of dust. Damp speckled the walls. The room doubled as a supply closet, with jars of coffee, boxes of tea bags and toilet rolls stacked on top of the filing cabinets lining the walls, each of which was filled with blood and murder, rape and domestic violence, petty crimes and parking ticket receipts. Every crime that had happened in Balkerne Heights had been shoved into the drawers, hidden away in the dark depths of the station to collect dust and grow yellow with age. But the town remembered, and Marcus was ready to claw the past back up again. If there was a connection between Hayley Miller’s disappearance and the recent killings, he would find it.

  He scanned the labels on the cabinets, arranged by year, and thought back to the scene of Cassie Jennings’ murder, the first time he had heard the mention of the past.

  Do you think this could be the same attacker as …

  Not a chance. That was twenty years ago.

  He turned the skeleton key in the lock for cases from 1997 and pulled open the first drawer. The cabinet’s musky breath billowed up into his face.

  Inside were wads of paperwork wrapped in brown slip files. He skimmed through them, scanning the dates, the crimes, the pain and suffering moving beneath his fingers.

  He glanced at the closed door as he heard footsteps from the hallway. He held his breath and listened, frozen to the spot, until he realised it wasn’t footsteps but the rapid beat of his heart.

  He slammed the drawer shut and opened the next, holding his breath against the dust as it drifted up. He skimmed through, wiping his brow as a drop of sweat fell into the drawer and soaked into a rape case from March 1997. He stopped when he noticed the large file hidden at the back of the drawer. Pages bulged from it as though they were ready to burst out. He pulled the rest of the paperwork forward and eased the file out, scraping his knuckles against the metal slider on the inside of the drawer. He licked at the blood and opened the cover.

  Hayley Miller.

  The file was quivering in his hands, stained with a small swipe of his blood. He licked his finger and tried to wipe it away, but only succeeded in rubbing it into a swirling red cloud.

  He couldn’t read it all there in the archives room; there were over a hundred pages in his hands. He would have to make his own copy during the day and return the file before anyone noticed.

  He quickly skimmed through it, watching black words and photos whip past in a blur. He stopped as a familiar name stared up at him.

  Interrogation of Dane Hannah in relation to case 99367, 1900 hours, 5 April 1997.

  He flipped the file shut and checked the name on the front again. It was definitely the file on Hayley Miller’s disappearance. This Dane shared the same surname as their witness.

  The door handle snapped downwards with a heavy hand and the door knocked into the open drawer of the filing cabinet. Lisa stood in the doorway, looking at the file in his hands.

  ‘What’s that?’

  A drop of sweat snaked down his back.

  ‘I’m checking past cases, the ones I was telling you about, crimes against women. I was looking for the file on –’ he closed his eyes and clicked his fingers to summon a name – ‘John Wilkes, the guy who attacked his female colleague.’

  ‘That happened seven years ago; you won’t find it in the 1997 files.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He closed the cabinet drawer with his foot.

  ‘Put that file back then,’ she said. ‘We haven’t got Amber around to sort this place out if we make a mess of it.’

  ‘Oh, this?’ He looked at the file in his hands, the back of it blank, Hayley Miller’s name pressed against his chest. ‘It’s a case from 2010. I’ll put it back when I’m done.’

  Lisa eyed him coolly, glanced at the case file vibrating in his grasp, and back to his eyes. She took a jar of coffee from the top of the filing cabinet and turned to leave.

  ‘Marcus …’ she said, turning back.

  ‘Yeah?’ His shirt was sticking to his back, drinking in the sweat.

  ‘Look into Cassie Jennings’ family. I’m sure we have case files on every single one of them. Her father was always in and out of the station, and her brothers have spent time in prison over the years. Might find something there.’

  ‘Good thinking. Thanks.’

  She studied him for a beat, as if searching for something in his eyes, and left the room.

  He only breathed out when he heard her turn in the bend of the hallway.

  FOURTEEN

  Naomi woke up to the warmth of the sun on her face. The room smelt of fresh sweat; she could taste the saltiness of it on her tongue with each breath. It wasn’t long before the memories came hurtling back.

  Brick. Glass. Body. Killer. Police.

  The mattress moved beneath her. A sigh unfurled from the other side of the bed.

  Dane.

  She still tingled where his lips had been, the memory of them scorched into her skin. She reached out and stroked his back. The beat of his heart buzzed beneath her fingertips. So many nights she would wake up from a nightmare and feel the bed for him. Now that he was there beside her, she couldn’t wait to get rid of him and the guilt.

  It could be like this again. If only one of us would make the sacrifice.

  ‘Afternoon,’ he said, his words blooming sleepily. He was on his side of the bed and she on hers. It was like he’d never left.

  She smiled weakly, guilt pulling at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘You feeling okay?’

  ‘This was a mistake.’ She pulled up the duvet to cover her chest.

  ‘It wasn’t and you know it.’

  ‘We can’t go back to how it used to be.’

  ‘Why can’t we?’

  ‘You want a baby. I don’t.’

  ‘We could adopt a kid, a grown-up one.’

  ‘Christ, Dane.’ She threw back the duvet and got up. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t want to be a mother?’

  She went into the en suite and shut the door behind her. They weren’t just hurting each other now; there was another heart they were breaking.

  ‘Let’s
talk this through,’ he said from the other side of the door.

  ‘Get dressed, Dane.’

  She sat on the toilet and covered her face with her hands. Two years of staying strong, and with one moment of weakness she had given in and ruined it all. She would have to start all over again.

  She flushed the toilet and returned to the bedroom. Dane was pulling on his trousers.

  ‘What’s changed from this morning? You initiated it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was scared. I needed to feel safe. This is my fault.’

  ‘I’ll leave Josie, I’ll end it with her.’

  ‘I don’t want you to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she can give you what I can’t!’

  They were back there, in the very same place that had torn them apart. Head to head, heart to heart. He was quiet for too long. She instinctively put her hands behind her back.

  ‘What happened to your hands, Naomi? Did you do that to yourself?’

  ‘No.’ It wasn’t a lie, but the word shook, betrayed by her own lips.

  ‘Are you trying to hurt yourself again?’

  He came towards her. She stepped back.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m not your concern.’

  ‘Show me your hands.’ He snatched them from behind her back.

  ‘I said no!’

  He pulled at the bandage on her right hand. Pain shot up her arm as though he was slicing her muscles into ribbons. She tried to get away from him, but he snatched her back. The bandage flittered to the floor.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he yelled, and shook her roughly. ‘Why do you do this to yourself?’

  ‘Get off, you’re hurting me!’

  The doorbell rang. They stood in silence. Dane slowly loosened his grip on her arms.

  ‘You need to leave. Out the back.’

  ‘We need to talk about this. I want to help you.’

  ‘Dane, please.’

  She headed for the stairs with his feet clipping the backs of her heels.