Or was it her idea? Did she lead him astray? Mrs Green had done nothing to condemn Ben, not said one word about handing himself in to the police nor even asked why it had happened. In fact, he had the feeling that she openly encouraged his recent behaviour.
He was right.
Mrs Green moved her glass to the side of the desk and gestured for Ben to give her his hands. Slowly he placed his murdering hands into the palms of his mother. Their eyes were locked and she spoke softly to her son, her last remaining family.
She told him that she knew about his father from the first time he had committed murder, and contrary to what Ben was probably thinking, it was what made Mr Green the kind and generous and loving husband and father that he was before he passed away.
She explained she knew about the voice in the head, and the man in the mirror, and the only way to take back control of the mind was to release the pressure from time to time.
‘You know who you are now, Ben,’ she said.
She passed him the glass of wine and he took a large gulp, large enough to finish the glass. He put it down on the desk.
‘I can't kill people, mum,’ he replied. ‘I can't do that. I'm scared, mum.’
‘We know you can, Ben, you already have,’ she said, sounding so calm, almost hypnotising him when she spoke. ‘It's in your blood. You need to commit to this life, Ben.’
Ben sat back in his seat.
Commit? He thought to himself.
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘You can try and hide your feelings, learn to live with the man in your head dictating your every mood, owning your every thought, or you can take control. Every now and then, release the pressure. Give in to your will. Let your nature take over for just those few moments, then bury those feelings until the next time.’
‘I… I can't control this,’ Ben replied. ‘He's too strong, mum.’
Mrs Green shook her head and once more took Ben's hands in her own.
‘You will listen to me. If you want any sort of future, you must listen to me. If you don't let nature takes its course, you will go mad. He will not let you think, he will not let you choose your path, he will ruin everything from here on in,’ she said, passionately, convincingly.
As shocking as it was to be having this conversation with his mother, Ben had himself realised that since the murders, the voice in his head had quietened down. Sure, the man was still in his head, and in the mirror, but he hadn't been as nasty, or as forceful as the last few weeks.
He wondered if his father had sat down with his mother and had a similar conversation all those years ago when the bad things started to happen. She wasn't all there in the head, his mother, but she was a strong woman and this was now becoming very clear to Ben.
‘So what do I do?’ he asked.
‘You take charge. Today,’ she said.
Mrs Green reached into the drawer at the front of the desk and pulled out a large knife, she placed it on the desk between her and her son.
‘What?’ said Ben.
‘Either your girlfriend, or that bastard she's been sleeping with. Or even that man who sacked you from your job,’ she said. ‘Decide.’
Ben was taken aback, lost in the moment. He was being told by his mother to choose someone to kill. Was this real? How did it get to this? He stood and looked beyond his mother, at his reflection in the window. When his father had died, had Ben inherited that dark part of his soul? Did Ben now carry the torch of death in his absence?
He checked his watch, and then picked up the knife.
‘I'll kill my boss,’ he said.
Mrs Green stood, walked around the desk and hugged her son. They held each other, this mother and son who had just formed a more complicated relationship than any normal soul could imagine. Then she loosened her grip and looked into her son's eyes.
‘Go.’
30
Ben crouched down behind a vehicle in the underground car park. It was reserved for executives and managers and was below the office block that housed Cutting Edge Marketing. He had left his own car at his mother’s house and used the walk to psyche himself up and prepare himself for his first premeditated murder.
Charlie was the boss of the company and never stayed late at the office and was often the first the leave by a good hour or so. Ben was hoping this would be the case today.
He had already been waiting for nearly an hour, constantly sweating and jumping out of his skin at the slightest sound. He could have sworn there was someone there watching, waiting to catch him red-handed, stood over the dead body of his ex-boss with a bloody knife in his hand. He would often stick his head up from behind the car where he was hiding, but nobody was there to be seen.
He'd cursed himself for bringing no form of camouflage, knowing that if anyone saw him that he would almost certainly be recognised. Fortunately, the rumour was that the car park security cameras were not working after an electrical glitch and hadn’t been repaired, something to do with certain companies claiming that it was not in their rental contract to contribute to the uphold of the CCTV system, as this was not general upkeep of the building. Some had paid, some hadn't; but as it stood, it was believed that the firm managing the building were not willing to pay the remaining cost themselves. If this was true, this was good news for anyone planning to commit a crime in the area.
Finally, Ben heard footsteps, then a voice on a phone.
‘Yeah,’ said the voice. ‘Listen, I'll be there soon. Yeah, I'm gonna cut out, I'm in the... shit.’
Ben heard the ‘BEEP’ of Charlie unlocking his car with the remote device then peeped over the car and saw him with his back to Ben and approaching his vehicle.
Adrenaline pumping, Ben stood and marched over to his chosen victim. Charlie heard the heavy footsteps behind him, and turned to see the man he had fired the day before.
Ben stopped on the spot, sweat running into his eyes. He had run the sequence of events through his mind a hundred times in the last hour. Wait for Charlie, approach from behind, attack then leave. What he hadn't envisioned was Charlie to ever face him, to make eye contact, to ever know that Ben was there.
‘What the fuck are you doing ‘ere?’ said Charlie, eyeing Ben up and down and shaking his head disapprovingly, ‘look at the fucking state of you! Jesus, Ben, you wanna get some fucking help. Go on, fuck off.’
And with that, Charlie opened his car door, sat in the driver's seat and closed the door behind him, watching in the mirror as Ben spun on the spot and speedily walked off towards the car exit.
Charlie put the key in the ignition, awkwardly pulled his phone from his pocket and tossed it onto the passenger seat before checking his hair in the rear-view mirror. He was interrupted by a tap on the window.
‘What now?’ he muttered, under his breath.
Charlie half turned the key, held his finger on a button and lowered the window.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
Those were his last words.
A knife had already been plunged in and out of his neck three times before he had even realised what was going on. He tried to get to the passenger side of the car, out of harm’s way, but his attacker was almost in through the window, frantically sticking the knife into random parts of Charlie's face, neck and body.
Charlie had started throwing his arms towards the figure in the window and maybe connected once or twice, but it wasn't enough. There was blood-loss, shock, fear and then death. Charlie lay slumped across the two seats. No more cockiness, no more arrogance, no more cruel words. Charlie was no more.
Ben stood a block away from his old workplace, bum against a wall, leaning forward and trying to control his breathing. He threw up.
He couldn't remember getting to where he was. He couldn't remember anything really. He checked his pocket and found the knife that he had taken from his mother's house. He remembered that now. Then he remembered waiting in the car park, then approaching Charlie but Charlie turning around telling him to go.
Then he remembered the feelings of weakness, and hopelessness, and walking away then running out of the car park.
Was that how it happened?
He threw up again and wiped his mouth. When he looked at his hands, he noticed the trembling had calmed down. The adrenaline was fading, his heart returning to a normal beat. It took a moment to regain his composure, and then he walked across the street and looked at his reflection in a shop window.
He looked ok, and the man in the mirror didn't make an appearance. Ben didn't know what that meant exactly, but thought it was significant.
He began walking, and ditched the knife at the first bin he came across, glad to get rid of it. He crossed a bridge, and looked below at the canal, the same canal that further upstream he had taken two innocent lives. He got to the steps that led down to the canal pathway and didn't know why but decided to walk in the direction of his home. As if by coincidence, his phone rang and it was Natalie. He thought for a moment that maybe the unconscious decision to walk in that direction was a sign, and that now was the time to sort out that particular situation.
He answered the phone and regretted it almost instantly. Natalie didn't waste any time in giving him some unexpected news.
‘I'm pregnant,’ she said.
31
Eve sat at the kitchen table and finished her salad. She hadn't got dressed since Ben had stripped her naked hours ago, and she felt great, and happy, so decided to treat herself and make the most of the situation. She planned to do some reading, maybe watch a movie, and just relax until Ben came back.
She had tried to call him before she began eating, but his phone went to answerphone. This didn't concern her, although she had seen that he had ignored calls from his mother and his girlfriend, but she firmly believed he wouldn't do the same to her. He can't have heard the phone, or he was driving, or talking to his mother or was maybe even seeing his old boss trying to get his job back. She didn't let herself think about him being with Natalie, she wasn't so much jealous, as a little insecure. But she did well to convince herself that he wasn't there, at the home they shared, patching up their differences.
Eve rose from the table, went to the bathroom and stood naked before the mirror, under the bright light. No make -up, no clothes, this was Eve. And today, Eve loved her life. She knew that this happiness was down to this wonderful guy she had met just hours ago. A man who had said he was not perfect, a man who has admitted that he had problems, many problems to deal with, yet a man who’d felt the same comfort in Eve's company, as she had in his.
She walked back into the front room and opened a drawer, pulled out her diary and a pen, then laid down on her bed. She propped herself up with an elbow, leant over the book and opened it up to the next blank page. Eve began to write about Ben, about the hopes and feelings he had provoked in her, about the dirty sex they'd had, about the soft, sensual sex they'd had too. She wrote about the tears he’d shed when talking about his problems, he had asked for her opinions but not for her help, he was strong and she was sure of it.
She wrote of the advice he had given her, comparing him to her parents who no longer spoke to her due to her straying off the path, her parents who sent just enough money to keep her off the streets every week, but not strong enough or caring enough to drag her back on the right path or even knock sense into her. Ben had spoken to her straight, honestly and openly, and she hung from every word as if this special guy knew secrets that no other person knew.
Eve laughed to herself. Was she getting carried away? She knew that she probably was, but she enjoyed it, she loved it, she may even love Ben, already! What was she thinking? She laughed some more.
Eve checked her mobile phone, on the off-chance that she may have missed a call or message from her new lover. She hadn't. She closed her diary and put it on the bedside table, grabbed the television and DVD remotes, and took her mind off things by watching one of her favourite films, a story about true and forever lasting love.
32
The car park had a strong police presence trying to keep an agitated mob of workers calm whilst trying to get any useful information from them. Workers, who had just finished a ten or twelve hour shift, were being told that they couldn't get to their vehicle due to a serious crime that had taken place.
There was not one useful statement given by any of the group.
The deceased had been dead for well over an hour before he was finally found. Almost half of the cars in the car park at the time of the murder had been driven away by their owners, without so much as a glance at Charlie's vehicle of death.
The woman who found him, a financial controller for a different company in the same building, only saw him as she was climbing into her car, parked next to his, and noticed the splatters of blood on her passenger side window. She went to inspect the mess and found more than she'd bargained for. Screaming, she'd run back up to the reception desk and that's when the police were called.
Summers stood a few feet from the car, as forensics, inch by inch, looked for fingerprints, fibres, hair, different types of blood and DNA, anything that could help pinpoint the killer.
‘Boss,’ called Kite.
Summers turned to see him approaching, a glum look on his face.
‘Give me some good news, Kite,’ said Summers.
‘No can do, boss,’ he replied. ‘Some disagreement between the firms who work here, and the management company, means that the CCTV was neither repaired nor upgraded after a problem with the system...’ he checked his notes, ‘last autumn.’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ spat Summers.
That was the first time Kite had heard his boss speak with such venom, he liked it.
‘I’ve got a full list of employees, past and present. Apparently he was a bit of a player, so no girlfriend as such, although there are a couple of bars and strip clubs he frequented,’ said Kite. ‘The secretary is going to email me a report which will show us who was at the victim’s office today, and if they were on the phone or logged onto their terminals around the time of death.’
One of the forensic team approached and told them that they were finished.
‘We've got a few samples of blood to test, also a hair that looked out of place. Fingerprints were collected for examination, but the number of people who could have already been in the car, or touched it, really means that the prints are not going to be the key to solving this one,’ he said. ‘We'll push through the blood and the hair as a priority and take it from there. Get your boys to bring the vehicle to us and we'll take a deeper look inside if necessary, but I'm not hopeful we'll find anything more. You can go ahead and get stuck in now.’
And with that, the forensic team made their exit, finally allowing Summers and Kite to get close to the crime scene. Within an instant, The Phantom was the number one suspect for both Summers and her new protégé.
Charlie's corpse had lost a considerable amount of blood, his face and hands were now very pale and his open eyes were lifeless.
Summers took in the sight before her.
It was clear that the murder weapon was a sharp object, likely a knife, used to stab the victim repeatedly until he was dead or very close to dying, certainly there wasn't much fight left in the victim when his murderer stopped attacking him.
The stab wounds were grouped around the face, neck and body of the victim, as was The Phantom’s typical modus operandi, although, the attack would seem to have taken place through the window of the car, meaning wounds to the lower parts of the victim’s body were less likely. This should be taken into account.
Kite and Summers had a look around and under the car, with the small hope that the murderer had amateurishly discarded his weapon before fleeing. This proved a fruitless waste of time. They approached each other and Kite summed up the situation.
‘No weapon, no CCTV, no witnesses, style of the murder would indicate our guy to be the primary suspect,’ he said.
Summers nodded, commending his brevity, but asked why The Phantom w
ould be here in this car park for the killing. Was it not random this time?
‘Let's hope forensics pull a rabbit out of the hat,’ she said.
‘Or a hair?’ joked Kite.
A small smile from Summers let him know that he got away with a bad joke in a sad moment, as two journalists walked around the corner but were blocked by some uniformed officers. Summers saw them and indicated to Kite that it was time to go, so they climbed into his car, reversed to the far end of the car park, and pulled out of the exit.
‘How were you getting on with the census details?’ Summers asked.
‘In fact,’ he replied, ‘the ONS were more helpful than I thought they would be. They’ve got a pretty organised system up there. With any luck, we should have a list of names and address' when we get back to the station.’
Summers gave a small sigh of relief. Even when all you've got is a long shot, it's better than nothing, and for once they’d a few things to go on. The list from the ONS should have a number of names that fit the profile of the killer, and live in the right part of town.
Also, the employees of the recently deceased Charlie Peacock meant a new line of enquiries had arisen, and if this was The Phantom, something had changed, he was working out of his comfort zone, this meant he was more likely to mess up.
And then there was the hair that ‘looked out of place,’ what did that mean? She kicked herself for not pushing for an explanation at the time, but trusted forensics to pass along any valuable information as and when it arrived.
They headed back to the station to set out a plan of action.
33
Ben and Natalie sat on the sofa.
The sofa had been the first thing that they'd bought together, a joint decision they'd made within days of her moving into his home, in an effort to make the place more suitable for both of them, instead of the bachelor pad that it was before she arrived.
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