‘You know what, wait here,’ said Tanya, before wobbling out of the room and up the stairs.
Natalie had never in her life shown any interest in babies or pregnant women. What she did have an interest in was herself, looking after herself, and manipulating others into making her life easier, better or more exciting. She was a devious, self-serving bitch, who was soaking up all the information that Tanya offered to her, preparing the biggest con she had ever attempted. Even for a woman like Natalie, when conning someone, a bit of luck was always welcome. And then it walked in through the front room door.
Tanya sat back down next to her guest and held out the digital pregnancy test she had not only talked about, but the one she had used all those months ago when she first discovered she was expecting, still with the word pregnant on the result screen. Natalie knew within seconds that she would be leaving with it tonight in her bag.
And with Tanya being as simple and naive as she was, all it took was Natalie to play dumb, claim she was useless with names of products, and how much easier it would be if she could take it and show the chemist what she wanted, and it was done. The pregnancy test was put into a clear, plastic sandwich bag and then into Natalie's handbag.
Natalie would still practise acting pregnant for when in front of Ben; the sympathy vote would definitely help them to re-establish their relationship on an 'affectionate' level, but with the help of a piece of kit that declares she is one hundred per cent pregnant, he couldn't deny that they have some sort of future together. Unless, of course, he didn't believe he was the father, but Natalie already had a strong argument for that one planned already.
The sound of the front door opening was Natalie's cue to leave.
She stood and thanked Tanya for her help, and asked her to keep the pregnancy to herself for the time being. David walked into the front room, dressed in sports gear from his squash game, and stopped on the spot when he saw the Natalie stood in front of his wife. He didn't say a word.
‘Natalie was just here to say congratulations for our little bundle of joy,’ said Tanya, happily patting the bump of her belly. ‘She’s just leaving.’
From the atmosphere, David concluded that he wasn't in the shit.
‘Hi Nat,’ said David, struggling to hide his awkwardness in the situation, ‘I'll, erm, I’ll walk you to your car.’
Natalie walked past David and out of the front door, he followed closely behind and when a good distance from his home, and more importantly from his wife inside, grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face him.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he said, anger reddening his face. ‘I'm sorry things went sour the other day when Ben came home, but that wasn't my fault.’
Natalie pulled her arm loose from David's grip and stared hard into his eyes.
‘Don't ever grab me like that again,’ she said, before adding cockily, ‘unless I'm on the clock.’
She turned and walked to her car.
‘You stay away from my wife!’ shouted David, kicking himself for raising his voice so close to home.
Natalie smiled at him as she pulled away down the road.
27
Ben Stepped out of the shower and dabbed his body dry with the clean towel that Eve had hung up for him. He wrapped it around his waist, picked up Eve's toothbrush and brushed his teeth whilst staring in the mirror, knowing that his reflection no longer belonged to him.
The man in the mirror winked.
Eve and Ben had agreed that in order to move forward, he must come to a decision on what he was going to do about Natalie.
Eve worried a little that Ben would forgive his girlfriend for cheating on him. Would she lose this special guy so soon after they had built this amazing bond? She decided that no, she didn't think so, and encouraged him to find a solution to the situation sooner rather than later, whilst he was still hurting inside, in fact.
An outsider looking in on Ben's life could be forgiven for thinking all women were manipulative and worked for their own agendas. Ben agreed that it was better if everybody knew where they stood.
For him, the greatest problem on his mind was the knowledge in his head. He knew that he had killed two people. He was a killer. He knew he could be found out by the police and sent to prison for a very long time, or even not found out and maybe forced to live with the guilt for the rest of his life. Although, when he thought about the two youths, that he so savagely beat to death, he didn't feel guilt. Staring at his alter ego in the mirror, and the man in the mirror staring unflinchingly back, they both knew that the only feeling Ben felt was the fear of being caught, which one would imagine, would lessen over time.
The more Ben thought about his craziness, because he was certainly quite a bit crazy and he’d accepted that at this point, the more he believed that he really didn't know his father at all. His father was The Phantom; his mother had no reason to lie. And as upsetting as this idea was, it also had a calming effect, because his father was never caught.
Ben knew murders went unsolved, and he was sure nobody had seen him at the canal, and he had left no weapon to be found and no other clues as far as he could tell. So, had he gotten away with it? He thought he probably had. Which led to the next potential problem, could he control his anger in the future? Could he face Natalie, for example, a woman who had very recently broken his heart, when he had been going through the hardest time of his life?
Eve had organised a one-on-one appointment for Ben to see an anger management counsellor, someone she had known for a while, and who could see him early in the afternoon. The plan was to see this guy before he went home to Natalie and hopefully learn some special techniques for keeping calm in the heat of the moments that would surely arise.
When the time came, Ben sat opposite the softly-spoken counsellor and explained that he had lost his temper with two teenage boys, who had been verbally abusive and even assaulted him by throwing a stone at his head.
He also gave, upon request, any mitigating circumstances. As the words came out of his mouth, of his father, his job and his girlfriend, Ben knew how stupid this sounded. There was a fundamental problem with this process. Ben could only give the counsellor so many details about the incident, and the counsellor could only give advice relative to the information he had been given.
‘There is no problem with defending yourself against people who are doing you harm, not morally, nor legally, to an extent,’ said the advisor, after listening to Ben recount events.
‘Reacting with violence is not a good thing, but in a situation such as this, completely understandable,’ he continued. ‘You were forced to defend yourself, and your natural reaction was to fight. Some would have fled, but either response is justifiable due to the circumstance you found yourself in, by no fault of your own.’
The counsellor also touched on the last two months that Ben had lived through, especially the morning he'd had, these were all factors that could impair one's judgement. Stress, emotional pain and shock are hard enough to deal with one at a time, all three together is tremendously difficult for anyone.
Ben sat and listened as he was given techniques to help curb his temper if anything like this arose in the future, but Ben knew the breathing techniques and counting to ten were not going to be of any help. He’d been using these tools for coping for a while already.
After shaking the counsellor’s hand and thanking him for his time, Ben walked out onto the street and realised that there was nobody he could rely on to get him through this. There was nobody he could be absolutely honest with about what he had done, and nobody who would stand by him after learning what a monster he had become. Nobody, that is, except his mother.
28
Summers had spent a couple of hours with the police psychologist, going over the old profile she had inherited from the case files, and looking to improve the psychological profile of The Phantom. She’d accept anything that could give her more clues as to narrow down the search and how to track him down.
<
br /> Ninety per cent of serial killers were white, aged in the mid-twenties to mid-thirties, had an above average IQ, although didn't necessarily perform well at school, and also preferred to spend time alone as opposed to taking part in social activities.
Serial killers can be categorized; some kill for gain, taking money or objects of value. That wasn't The Phantom. Some seek the power over their victims, but The Phantom was more a hit and run kind of killer, so that wasn't him, either. There was no sexual motivation for the killings, nor was there a specified group in the victims; The Phantom had killed different races, ages, sexes and religions. With the previous types of serial killers excluded, meant that the chances were, that The Phantom was what is known as a visionary serial killer. Usually psychotic or schizophrenic, the killer would perhaps hear voices who instructed that the killings should take place.
Something that didn't fit with any pattern of serial killings is the time frame that The Phantom worked at. Even if Summers only included the cases she believed could reasonably be attributed to The Phantom, the killings spanned over years, not weeks like history would dictate.
Summers and the psychologist also discussed the potential for The Phantom not to be a loner, but a family man. Not someone who lived alone and could come and go as he pleased, but a man with responsibilities who had to be careful not to be discovered by his loved ones to be a mad-man.
Summers had a theory that The Phantom was someone who jogged from home to crime scene, being able to move quickly without using transport or attracting attention from the public, for if you see someone wearing sports gear jogging down the road, you think nothing of it. If you see a man running in 'normal' clothes, it is normal to ask why, is he late? Is he being chased? Is he doing the chasing? Either way, you'd be remembered. Someone that jogged would also have the perfect excuse to leave his wife and children at home without at all looking suspicious.
But the psychologist didn't agree. She said that the statistics showed a much greater chance the killer was a loner of sorts. Although, she did concede that there had been cases, where for example, a wife or girlfriend suffered from a type of paraphilia called hybristophilia. That meant she would be sexually aroused or attracted to a criminal, someone who was capable of cruel or outrageous crimes. This phenomenon is known as 'Bonnie and Clyde' syndrome, after Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, part of a gang who robbed and murdered in the early thirties in Texas and Louisiana, USA.
Sat now alone in her office, Summers concluded that she had learnt some interesting facts and stats from the psychologist, but she was no closer to finding The Phantom.
Psychology, learning how the mind works and what makes us human. It was a field that she had of course touched on back at university, but it took a back seat as her attentions were mainly focused on the anatomy, medications and all the other things trainee doctors needed to know.
But she wasn't a doctor, she was a detective. She had the biggest case in the country to solve and at that moment, she didn't have a clue as to how on earth she was going to do it.
Just as she thought that things couldn't get any worse, the door to her office opened and in walked Kite, carrying the results from the forensics laboratory. He dropped the paperwork on Summers' desk and shook his head.
‘No joy,’ he said.
Summers took a deep breath and turned to face the map on her wall. She stared at the crime hot-spot and tried to gauge the amount of residential housing. She had to make some decisions based on information she didn’t have; she was going to follow her hunch. She stood and approached the map, looked at the three square miles and knew that there were too many houses and apartments to knock on every single door and ask for help in solving the case.
She turned to Kite.
‘We need the latest census,’ she said, knowing that luck for once was on their side, as it was only done just over a year ago. The census is done every ten years, so this exercise could have been little or no help at all.
‘You’re going to get in contact with the Office of National Statistics.’ she said.
‘Ok,’ said Kite, not quite sure where this was heading.
‘And you’re going to find out how many men…’ she paused briefly, weighing up the probable age of the killer, but not wanting too big an age range and therefore creating too many doors to knock on, ‘you’re going to find out how many men aged between twenty-eight and forty-five are living in this area here,’ pointing at the crime hot-spot.
Kite looked doubtful.
‘Boss, there’s gonna be bloody hundreds!’ he stated, ‘Maybe thousands. What are we gonna do, demand alibi’s from the entire community?’
Summers shook her head.
‘There won’t be thousands,’ she responded, ‘but even so, maybe that’s too many.’
She was thinking fast, she could feel the idea was good but just needed fine tuning.
‘Ok, get the names on the census from last year, and then do a search on the census from eleven years ago; using ages eighteen to thirty-five. Anyone who is on both lists fits the profile age and location. Let’s start again on the streets.’
‘You’re the boss, but, what are we gonna do? Knock on the door and ask if The Phantom lives here?’ asked Kite.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘we’re going to ask for DNA samples, in order for any innocent potential suspects to rule themselves out of our investigation, and at the same time, help solve this bastard case once and for all.’
Kite wondered whether he should point out the obvious flaw in his boss’ plan of action, he decided he’d better.
‘But we don’t have any DNA to compare samples with,’ he said.
Summers smiled, if only for an instant.
‘Detective Kite, as of right now, only you, me, and the lab know that we don’t have any DNA samples,’ she said. ‘And that’s how it’s going to stay. Anybody who refuses to give DNA will be asked for an alibi for the latest murders, those who cannot provide one better have a good reason why we don’t drag them down to the station for further questioning.’
Kite saw a determination on Summers’ face, he knew that this was a long shot, but he trusted her judgement; she had proven herself to be one of the best, after all.
29
Ben stood on the doorstep of his mother's house, the house he grew up in, the house where all he knew was innocence and love and joy and happiness. How things had changed. He didn't really want to face her just yet, but she’d left a couple of messages after he’d ignored her calls, so felt obliged.
He also didn't want to hear more about his father but knew he needed to. To be told that the man he grew up admiring, learning from and trusting more than anybody else, was a cold-blooded killer. To be told that his father had in fact passed on to him this sickening disease that was now penetrating his every thought, every waking moment. How could the man he loved, and who loved him unconditionally let this happen?
Ben put his key into the lock and let himself in. He went straight to the kitchen, which is where his mother would usually be, reading a newspaper or listening to the radio, but she wasn’t there.
‘Benjamin?’ she called from another room.
Ben headed towards the voice of his mother and entered the red room, his dad's old office. His mouth dropped wide open.
What the hell had happened here? He thought.
He stood in the centre of the room and let his gaze wander from wall to wall, mentally absorbing the redness from everywhere, except where dozens of framed pictures and newspaper clippings now hung. He glanced at his mother, who sat behind the desk with a glass of wine cupped between her two hands, smiling at her son.
Ben didn't say a word, but glanced at the ceiling, red also, and then he took a step towards the picture frames and quickly recognised that all the information and pictures hung on these walls were relevant to The Phantom, or the victims, or the police not having a clue as to who was responsible for these sickening murders.
Ben was in a daze.
&n
bsp; ‘Close the door, Ben,’ said Mrs Green. ‘We need to talk’.
Ben was speechless. He turned slowly and pushed the door shut, then his eyes widened. On the back of a door hung a mirror, and with the lighting in the room and the redness, Ben didn't know anything anymore. Was he in hell? Was he the devil himself?
He turned to face his mother, and for the first time noticed her red hair and bright red lipstick. Ben slowly stepped towards her and sat down in the seat his side of the desk, a chair that she had dragged in from the kitchen; she had been expecting him.
Mrs Green took a newspaper clipping from her side of the desk and placed it in front of her son. It was from the local newspaper, describing how two youngsters had been brutally murdered the day before, less than a mile from where they both sat at that moment.
Ben looked his mother in the eyes.
‘It's true about dad?’ he asked.
His mother nodded.
‘And I'm the same,’ he said, as he pushed the news article back towards his mother.
Ben suddenly felt a wave of ease flow through his body. It was the first time he had admitted out loud what he was, the first time he had admitted to someone what he had done. His mother saw the burden lift from Ben's shoulders and the frown lines retire from his tired face.
She smiled.
‘That feeling,’ she said to him, ‘that's acceptance.’
His mother, the woman from whom he had recently been trying to keep his distance, knowing that her madness was worsening and that she was very difficult to deal with at the best of times, was now the only person who he could confide in, the only person who would not judge him, and had lived through this very experience with his father for the last few years, or however long she had known that her husband was a killer.
She even seemed pleased, which was something Ben couldn't quite get his head around. Was it due to her illness? Or was her illness a result of discovering her husband to be The Phantom? That has to be a shock to anyone, and a reaction to news like that could play all sorts of havoc on the mind. She chose to stay with him, to support her husband through the good times and the bad, the highs and the lows.
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