He assumed that she was taking measures against pregnancy, and believed that she would have forced him to wear protection if she knew she carried a disease of a sexual nature. But even if she was carrying something, he thought to himself, chlamydia or whatever, maybe he could shag Natalie again and give it to her, like some sort of parting gift.
Fuck you very much, bitch, he thought, before questioning his himself. Was I really just thinking that? Or was it the man in the mirror, being an evil and twisted monster again?
Eve laid her head on Ben's chest, and they began a deep conversation that would last over an hour. Ben tried to explain to Eve that she should go back to university and finish her degree. Or even if she hated that subject, to find something else that she liked and start again there. She pleaded with Ben to understand her views on the world, and that playing along with the rules set by 'the powers that be', was not the way to make change.
Ben asked if she wanted to be like Che Guevara?
‘A revolutionist?’ she asked.
‘No, a mass murderer, killing in the name of progression,’ he joked.
‘I don't know, maybe,’ she said, chuckling.
He was a few years older than Eve, his life was an awful mess at that moment, and he wasn't the most successful man in the world by any stretch of the imagination either, but he sensed that Eve needed some guidance.
He told her it was clear she cared for people, had an interest in them, and that this was obvious from the seminars and talk groups that she frequented. He advised her to maybe find a career path in something related to that, to play the game by building a career, but at the same time, doing something that gave her a sense of achievement, finding happiness and giving herself some self-worth.
‘Maybe you're right,’ she said. ‘And what about you? What are you going to do about work? And more importantly, what about your girlfriend?’
Ben gently stroked Eve's arm, as he closed his eyes and for the first time since all that had happened, gave a moment’s thought to the future, as opposed to everything he had just been through or worrying about the things he had done, or even just being lost in the moment with his lovely new friend.
Eve was a young, beautiful and strong-willed woman, but lost in a world that could chew you up and spit you out, without a second's thought. Even so, he trusted her, more than anyone else in his life right now.
‘So what do you think I should do?’ he asked.
She caressed his chest, lightly scratching his skin as she done so and snuggled herself closer into his body.
She said the job was just a job. He could have guessed she was going to say that, but then she mentioned that his mortgage was paid off, and that this was the greatest expense the majority of people had to worry about, that as long as he had a little saved to get by for the time being, for food and the smaller bills, financially he didn't really have anything to worry about.
She was right. He knew it. He smiled.
‘And as for your girlfriend...’ she said.
Eve had not once used Natalie's name, this gave Ben the feeling that Eve liked him the way in which he liked her. Did she see Natalie as the enemy? He thought so. She tried, but didn't succeed, to remain impartial when talking about Ben's relationship with 'the woman who he had just been betrayed by'.
She compared her betrayal to Ben and Eve sleeping with each other since last night; were they in the wrong also? Would this have happened if she hadn't cheated on Ben? He knew that if he had not caught Natalie and Dave together the day before, he would be back at home, back in his rut of depression, back to asking himself what he was meant to be doing with his life.
He also wouldn't have murdered two innocent teenagers. Ben drifted off into deep thought again, Eve's voice falling further from his mind. And if he didn't kill those two kids yesterday, when would it have happened?
The man in the mirror had been there for a while now, appearing more frequently as the days had passed. His messages were clearer every time he had something to say. There was a bad man inside Ben, and no matter how good he felt when passing the time with his new friend, Eve, no matter how fair and just her advice for him was, he realised that things had gone too far already.
‘...so I think you need to start by talking to her, and being honest. Then just see if you can believe a word she says,’ concluded Eve.
Ben smiled and kissed her on the forehead. She kissed him back and ran her hand up the inside of his thigh, cupping his balls, and massaging them gently.
Ben's phone began to vibrate, reluctantly, he picked it up and they both saw Natalie's name appear on the screen; the moment for more sex had passed.
‘You'd better get that,’ said Eve, as she got up from the bed and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind her and turning on the shower.
‘I haven't got anything to say to you, Nat,’ he said as he held the phone to his ear. ‘I just need a bit of time to get my head around things.’
‘But Ben, I love you. We need to talk, this is important. Please, just come home...’ Natalie pleaded.
He ended the call with Natalie mid-sentence and tossed the phone beside him. Mentally drained, he put his head to the pillow and tried to shut out the noise from all the thoughts in his head.
24
Mrs Green stood in the near-bare room that had been rather haphazardly painted 'Devil Red'.
She peeled off her all-in-one painting overall and screwed it up, then placed it in a plastic bag and looked around the room and smiled, proud of her accomplishment. She had painted the room in just a couple of hours, that's a good pace of work for anybody, although the quality of her work was sloppy, very poor even.
Red paint had dripped and ran onto the carpet from the roller, and from when too much had been applied to the surfaces in one go. The white coving had been painted, where she hadn't missed bits, and the white ceiling had been rolled red as well, which had clearly proven difficult, as the quality of finish could have been better from a blind person with shaky hands.
She had obviously been frustrated at one point, as the paint covered computer equipment had been pushed from the desk and was now smashed and broken on the floor. But still, at that very moment, she was happy.
Mrs Green took the bag with the overalls and dumped them beside the kitchen bin. She hadn't finished all she had planned for the day in her ‘red room’ but had some time before the paint would dry so decided to have another glass of wine.
The open bottle sat on the table, but she couldn't see her glass, she'd forgotten that she threw it out into the garden earlier on, that unfair act of violence towards an animal just doing as it was genetically programmed to do, exploring the outdoors and marking its territory.
She didn't see the correlation between the cat being a cat, and the advice she had recently given to her son.
‘This is who you are, Ben, it is in your blood.’
There were no clean glasses in the cupboard. She looked in the dishwasher and found them all there, the big and the small, all dirty, so grabbed one out at random, slammed the door shut and started the machine without adding any cleaning product.
She sat at the table, placed her filthy glass down and poured, filled it to the top with her preferred red wine, then gulped it down.
Mrs Green leant across the table and flicked on the radio, it was tuned in as always to the local news channel. As with all smaller radio stations, it relied on advertising for funding, and at the time was going through its usual five minutes of advertisements. Annoyed, she cursed under her breath at this unfortunate timing, 'fucking adverts.'
Also on the table was a cardboard box, filled with newspaper cut-outs and photo frames, some of which she’d salvaged from the clearing out of Mr Green's office. She carefully lifted them out of the box, one by one, and gently placed them to the side. If she had taken this much care with the painting, the end result would have been entirely different in the red room. After the last of the frames were resting on the table, she lifted out
the newspaper clippings. She sifted through the pictures and stories, all of which were relevant to The Phantom killings.
Mrs Green's ears pricked up and a smile ever so slightly crept onto her face as finally, the advertisements finished and the radio presenter said they were cutting to a statement being made by a Detective Inspector Summers, the latest officer in charge of The Phantom case.
The press were going quite hard on Summers, who had just announced that the police believed the killings of teenagers Ricky Robinson and Alexia White were down to The Phantom.
A few members of the press were quick to state that, if this was The Phantom, this was the first time he had killed two victims at the same time, and also that the frequency of the murders was increasing. What was her planned course of action? What were the police going to do in order to protect the public?
For all her brightness, Summers didn't have the answers they wanted to hear.
She wished it was Watts fielding the questions; although she knew he'd never put himself in the line of fire. Or even Kite, if he could transfer his interviewing skills into the media room, then he could give the press a run for their money. She made a mental note of this for next time.
A cocky journalist stood, working for a national tabloid, and asked a question that Summers knew would arise at some point, and had even practised a cool, calm response to.
‘Can you honestly say, after the tragedy of The Phantom murdering your father, that you are the best person to lead this investigation?’ asked the reporter. ‘Can you remain professional, when this case has an obvious personal involvement for you?’ he continued.
In her practised response, Summers had coolly played down her personal involvement in the case. Her father's death was a tragedy, a good man lost at the hands of pure evil. That she was going to put this criminal behind bars, not just for him, but for the families and friends of all the victims, and also to protect the innocent public from further atrocities.
But she didn't react like that.
The loss for words at the previous questions, the disagreement with her boss about the person responsible for the latest killings, her personal involvement, they all came into play. Suddenly, she doubted herself. And when she opened her mouth to give a reply, not one word came out. An incredibly awkward silence, for what felt like days to Summers, hung in the air until she turned away from the crowd and walked out of the media room, leaving the press buzzing amongst themselves.
The radio presenter came back on air, clearly shocked by what had just happened at police headquarters, and added his two pence worth of opinion, branding the decision to give this case to a victim’s relative shambolic, and further bad management by the authorities in charge of solving these crimes and finding The Phantom.
Mrs Green chuckled, and stared into the newspaper cut-out she now held in her hands. Dated six years earlier, the headline read, ‘Detective Summers murdered, Phantom strikes again.’
25
Summers strode into her office, slammed the door closed behind her and sat down heavily behind her desk. She took a minute to work on her breathing exercises, as recommended to her from an old friend from back in her medical days, to help calm down.
‘Oh, sod this,’ she said, as she gave up on the breathing and pulled out her hip-flask.
Half-way through her second gulp, the door to her office burst open and in walked Watts, closing the door behind him and sitting down in the chair the other side of her desk. He raised his eyebrows at her as she screwed the lid back onto the hip-flask and put it into a drawer. She wiped her mouth then gave him her attention, waiting for the inevitable disciplining she was about to receive.
Surprisingly, it didn't arrive. At least, not in the way that would have been completely justified.
‘We always knew this was going to be hard. We discussed this. You told me this was the case you wanted, the reason you joined the force. Now, I'm going to ask you one last time, and that will be the end of it,’ said Watts. ‘Your personal involvement in this case is not necessarily a problem to me, you know that. But tell me, are your feelings being a hindrance? Or are you going to catch this guy and put him behind bars?’
Summers sat up in her chair, took a deep breath and looked straight into the eyes of her superior.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, ‘I will bring The Phantom to justice. For my father, for the other victims, for...’
‘Stop,’ Watts interjected. ‘Why you do it is not my concern,’ he said as he stood. ‘Just get it done.’
Summers gave a nod. She understood.
Trying to give the case such a detailed reason as to why she wanted it solved wasn't the point. If anything, someone so close to the case emotionally should be hiding their feelings, and not give any reason at all. She was a professional, this was her job. That was reason enough.
Watts opened the door but stopped himself before leaving the room, turning back to Summers.
‘One last thing,’ he said, ‘you are not your father, and that's the last time I want to catch you drinking on duty.’
He paused for a moment, the wheels of thought in motion inside his head.
‘And maybe we'll keep you away from the press for the time being. If need be, send your man Kite to do the talking,’ he said, ‘but you prepare any statements beforehand. Let them feed on him. Keep your head straight and crack this bastard case.’
He left the room and closed the door.
'Thank god,' she thought, before pulling out the hip-flask, and taking what she told herself would be the last taste of the day, or at least of the morning.
26
Natalie rang the door-bell and took a step back on the front porch. She looked around behind her, there was nothing going on in this leafy, upmarket, residential city street. The door opened, and Tanya Reynolds was slightly taken aback to find Natalie on her doorstep.
‘Natalie? Oh my god, it's been ages!’ said the heavily pregnant wife of David.
David was out, at some sports event he had mentioned to Natalie, and she was ballsy enough to exploit his absence.
‘Yeah, I know, I bumped into David yesterday and he told me the good news,’ replied Natalie, gesturing to Tanya's swollen body and pulling a bottle of sparkling wine from behind her back. ‘Of course, it's alcohol-free, but I thought we should celebrate and catch up. If it’s not a bad time, you’re not resting?’
David's prostitute was invited into the family home. Natalie really had no difficulty being a two-faced bitch.
Tanya opened the bottle of sparkling, non-alcoholic wine with a pop, excitedly poured two glasses and sat down next to Natalie in the front room. They gave a toast to the health of the baby, and took a sip from their glasses. Natalie hid her disgust of the taste; she really wasn't used to drinking wine unless it was the expensive stuff that Mr Money or one of the other high-flyers would sometimes ply her with, but she knew this was not a good bottle, even for a non-alcoholic.
Tanya spent twenty minutes or so explaining how excited she and David were about becoming parents, how she stopped work around a year ago as David said she was better than the hairdresser she used to be, and also that actually, Natalie was the first visitor that she'd had for quite a while.
Natalie tried hard to pay attention as Tanya gave her what was feeling a lot like a whole life story. The truth was that Natalie had no time for Tanya.
She didn't blame David for marrying her, Tanya was hot. Not just good looking, or beautiful, but smoking-hot. She would have no trouble becoming a model, even breaking into television with the looks she'd been blessed with, but she had no self-esteem, zero. And she wasn't very intelligent, either.
David had always loved to show her off when they both started dating, but then the boys-club began to mock him about how slow his girlfriend was, and the women all found it hard to converse with her on an adult level. She knew about hairdressing and celebrities, and she wanted babies; not the same topics of interest for the money hungry, back stabbing bitches of the city, th
e type that the up-and-coming rich-boys would normally be seen with.
So David kept her at home, starting a family to keep her happy, and he would have the most gorgeous wife on his arm if there was ever an occasion for him to show her off in the right crowd, or for the occasional photograph.
Natalie could sense Tanya was coming to the end of her situation update, now was her chance to do what she had gone there for.
‘You see, Tanya, the real reason I'm here,’ said Natalie, 'is... I don't know exactly how to say this.’
Tanya’s face was now one of concern.
‘What is it?’ said Tanya. ‘Natalie, is it Ben? What's wrong?’
Natalie edged her way closer to Tanya on the sofa.
‘I think,’ she said, looking into Tanya's eyes, ‘I think I may be pregnant.’
A smile instantly appeared from ear to ear on Tanya's face. ‘Congratulations!’ She threw her arms around Natalie, who calmly eased her way out of the unwanted hug and told Tanya to calm down.
Natalie explained that it must be early days, if she was pregnant, as she was late on her period by two weeks and had felt a little sick for a few days now. She explained that the real reason she was here was to ask about all the symptoms she should expect at the start of the pregnancy, from someone who has gone through it and what she should do. She claimed she hadn't yet done the test to confirm as she wanted to do it with Ben.
Tanya couldn't hide her excitement, and told her all about the first few months of her own pregnancy; the pain in her breasts, the morning sickness that struck in the evening not in the morning and even though she had wanted a baby for years, the hormone changes in her body had given her mood swings that were just awful; happy, depressed, tearful, happy again.
Tanya recommended a digital pregnancy test, one that was brand new to the market when she had needed one herself, as it was the most efficient and gave the least false-positive results of all the brands. She noticed that Natalie had a blank look on her face.
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